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THE CROWJ^ OF WILD OLIVE 



AND 



THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

BY 

JOHN RUSKIN 

EDITED WITH NOTES AND AN INTRODUCTION 

BY 

WIGHTMAN F. MELTON, Ph.D. 

"bishop GEORGE F. PIERCE" PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH 
EMORY COLLEGE, OXFOP.D, GEOEGIA 



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PREFATORY NOTE 

RusKiN is as hard to annotate as he is easy to read. He 
refers to ahnost everything in mere glancing allusion. For 
assistance in " running down " some of these references, I 
wish to thank my colleagues Dr. Charles W. Peppier, Dr. 
E. K. Turner, and Professor Edgar W. Johnson. For simi- 
lar favors I am grateful to Dr. William Hand Browne of 
the Johns Hopkins University and Miss Frieda Thies of the 
Hopkins Library. 

W. F. M. 



vu 



CONTENTS 



Prefatory Note 

Introduction : 

John Ruskin 
Analysis of a Lecture . 
Subjects for Composition 
Bibliography 



The Crown of Wild Olive 

Introduction 
I. Work . 
II. Traffic 
III. War ... 



The Queen of the Air: 

Preface . . . , 
I. Athena in the Heavens 
II. Athena in the Earth . 

III. Athena in the Heart . 

IV. The Hercules of Camarina 

Notes 

Index to Notes - . . , 



PAGE 

vii 

xi 

xvii 

XX 

xxiv 



1 

17 

48 

75 



113 
117 

167 
205 
257 

269 

363 



IX 



INTRODUCTION 

John Ruskin 

John Ruskin was born in London, February 8, 1819. 
His parents were educated, well-to-do Scotch people. 
The father, a successful business man, and a member of a 
prosperous firm of wine merchants (Ruskin, Telford, and 
Domecq), was, nevertheless, a lover of good books and 
pictures, and gave his son ample opportunity for the culti- 
vation and formation of literary style and artistic taste. 
His mother, an orthodox Scotch woman, looked carefully 
after the boy's religious training. 

In his last years Ruskin gave, in Proeterita, a detailed 
and unreserved account of the events of his childhood. 
It is done so exquisitely that one can do no better than to 
paraphrase some parts of his stor5^ He tells (p. 16) how, 
at five or six years of age, he could pass his days con- 
tentedly in tracing the squares and comparing the colors 
in his carpet, examining the knots in the wood of the 
floor, or counting the bricks in the opposite houses. This 
pleasure, in simple occupation and loneliness, was doubt- 
less due to the fact that he was allowed to have no toys, and 
was often whipped. While Ruskin was a small boy it was 
customary for him, at six p.m., punctually, to join his 
parents in the drawing-room. He had (p. 51) his cup of 
milk and slice of bread and butter, in a little recess, with a 
table in front of it, wholly sacred to him, and in which he 

xi 



xu INTRODUCTION 

remained in the evenings as an idol in a niche, while his 
mother knitted, and his father read to her, — and to him, 
so far as he chose to listen. Little Ruskin's niche (pp. 
92-93) was a recess beside the fireplace, well lighted from 
the lateral window in the summer evenings, and by the 
chimney-place lamp in winter, and out of all inconven- 
ient heat, or hurtful draught. A writing table before the 
niche shut the boy well in, and served as a place for his 
cup, plate, and book. After tea, his father read to his 
mother w^iatever pleased themselves, while he picked up 
what he could, or read-what he liked better instead. Thus 
he heard all the Shakespeare comedies and historical 
plays again and again, — all of Scott, and all of Don 
Quixote, a favorite book of his father's. 

Ruskin says his father was an absolutely beautiful 
reader of the best poetry and prose: of Shakespeare, 
Pope, Spenser, Byron, and Scott ; as of Goldsmith, Addi- 
son, and Johnson, and that liis delivery of Hamlet, Lear, 
Caesar, or Marmion, was melodiously grand and just. 
Ruskin probably first became interested in two of his 
masters,' Scott and Pope, through the influence of his 
father's reading. Evidently he was quite young, for he 
says {Prceterita, p. 1) that on Sundaj^s the effect of Scott's 
novels and Pope's translation of the Iliad was tempered 
by Robinson Crusoe and Pilgrim's Progress. He says (p. 
51) that he can no more recall the time when he did not 
know the Waverley Novels than when he did not know the 
Bible. 

Ruskin chronicles (Pro^terita, pp. 52-58), with deep 
gratitude, his debt to his mother for the resolutely con- 
sistent lessons which so exercised him in the Scriptures 
as to make every word of them familiar to his ear in habit- 
ual music, — yet in that familiarit}' reverenced, as tran- 



INTRODUCTION xiii 

scending all thought, and ordaining all conduct. This, he 
says, she effected, not by her own sayings of personal 
authority, but simply by compelling him to read the Book 
thoroughly for himself. As soon as he was able to read 
with fluency, she began a course of Bible work with him, 
which never ceased till he went to Oxford. She read 
alternate verses with him, w^atching at first every intona- 
tion of his voice, and correcting the false ones, till she 
made him understand the verse, if within his reach, rightly 
and energetically. It might be beyond him altogether; 
that she did not care about ; but she made sure that as 
soon as he got hold of it at all, he should get hold of it by 
the right end. In this way she began with the first verse in 
Genesis, and went straight through, to the last verse of the 
Apocalypse ; hard names, numbers, Levitical law, and all ; 
and began again at Genesis the next day. After the read- 
ing, two or three chapters a day according to their length, 
he had to learn a few verses by heart, or repeat, to make 
sure he had not lost something of what was already 
known. 

Mrs. Ruskin allowed not so much as a syllable to be 
missed or misplaced ; while every sentence was required 
to be said over and over again until she was satisfied with 
the accent of it. Young Ruskin and his mother had a 
struggle of about three weeks concerning the accent of the 
''of" in the hnes — 

Shall any following spring revive 
The ashes of the urn? 

Ruskin insisting, partly in childish obstinacy, ana partly 
in true instinct for rhythm, on reciting it with an accented 
of. It was not till after three weeks' labor that his 
mother got the accent lightened on the " of " and laid on the 



xiv INTRODUCTION 

ashes, to suit her. Riiskin says if it had taken three years, 
she would have done it, having once undertaken to do it. 
He says, furthermore, that he is thankful she succeeded ; 
but after all, we know that the child was right in accenting 
the ()/. 

Ruskin's mother made a Ust of the chapters which she 
required him to memorize, and with which she gave him 
secure ground for all future life, practical and spiritual. 
It is interesting to note the special influence of these 
chapters in his various writings. Here is the Hst : — 

Exodus, chapters 15 and 30. 

2 Samuel, chapter 1, from verse 17 to the end. 

1 Kings, chapter S. 

Psalms. 23, 32, 90, 91. 103, 112, 119, 139. 

Proverbs, chapters 2, 3, S, 12. 

Isaiah, chapter 58. 

Matthew, chapters 5, 6, 7. 

Acts, chapter 26. 

1 Corinthians, chapters 13, 15. 

James, chapter 4. 

Revelations, chapters 5, 6. 

Ruskin declares that, though he picked up the elements 
of a little further knowledge in mathematics, meteorology, 
and the like, in after life, the essential part of all his educa- 
tion was the careful training in the Bible that his mother 
gave him. 

In his early years yoimg Ruskin accompanied his parents 
on summer toiu's through England. Scotland, France, Ger- 
many, and Switzerland. It was during these years that 
he saw {Prcrterita. p. 7) nearly all the noblemen's houses in 
England : and in reverent and heiilthy dehght of uncove- 
tous admiration. — perceiving, as soon as he could perceive 
any poHtical truth at all. that it was probably much hap- 



INTRODUCTION XV 

pier to live in a small house, and have Warwick Castle to 
be astonished at, than to live in Warwick Castle and have 
nothing to be astonished at. 

Ruskin was an only child, and while he is not ungrateful 
for what his parents did to help him, he counts (p. 62) the 
dominant calamities of his life as being : First, that he 
had nothing to love; second (p. 63), he had noth- 
ing to endure; thirdly, he was taught no precision 
or etiquette of manners; lastly (p. 64), and chief of 
evils, his judgment of right and wrong, the powers of 
independent action (not thought, in which he says he was 
too independent) were left entirely undeveloped ; because 
the bridle and blinkers were never taken off him. He de- 
clares (p. 65) that he was by protection innocent, instead 
of by practice virtuous. But, he adds (p. 71), '' My native 
disposition . . . though I say it, is extremely amiable, 
when Fm not bothered." Whether acquired in childhood, 
or later, Ruskin recounts (p. 61) peace, obedience, faith, — 
these three for chief good ; next to these the habit of fixed 
attention with both eyes and mind, as being the main 
practical faculty of his life. 

We get some idea of the bigness of Ruskin 's heart from 
his remarks (p. 96) concerning a mistaken correspondent 
who complained of his habit of sneering at people of no 
ancestry. He says he had no such habit; though not 
always entirely at ease in writing of his uncles the baker 
and the tanner. All his readers, he affirms, may trust him 
when he tells them that, in remembering his dreams in the 
house of the entirely honest chief baker of Market Street, 
Croydon, and of Peter, — not Simon, — the tanner, whose 
house was by the riverside of Perth, he would not change 
the dreams, far less the tender realities, of those early days, 
for anything ho could hear remembered by lords or dames, 



xvi INTRODUCTION 

of their days of childhood in castle halls, and by sweet 
lawns and lakes in park-walled forest. 

Of Ruskin's education, a brief account must here suf- 
fice. When he was fifteen years old, he planned and car- 
ried on courses of study in poetry, engraving, architec- 
ture, and geology. When he entered the schoolroom of 
Rev. Thomas Dale, his whole previous training, except a 
few lessons in Greek under Dr. Andrews, had been received 
from his mother. From "Sir. Dale's school Ruskin went to 
Christ Chiu'ch, Oxford, where, in due course of time, he 
won the Newdigate Prize for a poem entitled, Salsctte and 
Elephanta, depicting the dawn of Christianity in Hindu- 
stan. At seventeen (1S36) Ruskin found himself deeply 
in love with Adele Domecq, eldest daughter of his father's 
Parisian partner. A few years later (1840) he heard of her 
approaching marriage to a young French nobleman, and 
betook himself to France and Italy for his health. About 
this time (1S40), and a year before receiving his B.A. 
degree from Oxford, Ruskin came back from the continent 
and spent some time in Scotland. It was then, there, and 
on the invitation of the Scottish maiden whom he married 
eight veal's later, that he wrote the delightful story. The 
King of the Golden River. 

To give a list of all Ruskin's writings, with appropriate 
comment, would make another book. In fact, such a book 
exists: John Ruskin, by Mrs. ^leynell, Xew York, 1900. 
The student is further referred to the Bibliography which 
follows (pp. xxvi-xxix) and which, with only slight al- 
teration, is copied with the generous consent of Mr. Her- 
bert Bates, editor of Ruskin's Sesame and Lilies, in this 
vMacmillan) Pocket Classic Series. 

One who desires to get, in an hour's reading, a good 
general idea of "Ruskin the Man," "•Ruskin the Writer," 



INTRODUCTION xvii 

and "Ruskin's Teaching and Influence," will find it in 
Bates's Introduction (pp. ix-xxxix). He gives a satis- 
Tactoiy conclusion of the whole matter (p. xxi) : " To be 
willing to see the beauty that is — to show helpful sym- 
pathy for men about us, to be willing and glad to work for 
tko joy of doing our work well, and, above all, to keep clear 
our sight of the real mystery and nobility of life, — that, 
in short, is the burden of Ruskin's teaching." 

This brief introduction may well close with a statement 
made recently by Mr. Bates in a private letter: "Ruskin 
certainly is a bigger influence in the best of modern hfe 
than he ever gets credit for being. We think we are doing 
it all ourselves ; but he started a great part of the modern 
feehng toward industrial art." 

ANALYSIS OF A LECTURE 

In order fully to comprehend these lectures, and to 
follow the drift of Ruskin's thought, it is worth while, after 
having first rapidly read a lecture, to reread it slowly and 
carefull}^, meanwhile making an analysis of it. 

The following brief (Lecture I. Work) is a suggestion 
as to what may be done and how to do it. The first five 
paragraphs (17-21) are introductory : — 

A. Distinctions. 

I. (§ 22.) Between those who work and those who 

play, or Work and Play. 
II. Between those who produce the means of life 
and those who consume them, or Producers 
and Consumers. 
III. Between those who work with the head and those 
who work with the hand, or Head-workers and 



XV 111 INTRODUCTION 

Hand-workers (called, in § 30, the Rich and 
the Poor). 
IV. Between those who work wisely and those who 
work fooHshly, or Wise Workers and Foolish 
Workers. 
I. (§§ 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28.) Work and Play. 

1. Work. 

a. Definite aim. 
h. For utihty. 

2. Play. 

a. No definite aim. 
h. For amusement. 
c. Kinds of play (games) : — 

i. '' iNIaking " or " winning " money, 
ii. Hunting and shooting, 
iii. Ladies' dressing, 
iv. War. 
II. (§§ 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35.) Producers and Con- 
sumers. 

It will be observed that Ruskin deviates into the inci- 
dental subject of the rich and the poor, making it difficult 
to tabulate the subheads of this section. The following 
may suffice : — 

1. Producers. 

a. Poor producer. 
6. Rich producer. 

2. Consumers. 

a. Rich consumer. 
h. Poor consumer. 
III. (§§ 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42.) Head-workers and 
Hand-workers. 
(In § 22, Ruskin gives the order: (1) Head, 



INTRODUCTION xix 

(2) Hand. Now (§36), he reverses the 
order.) 

1 . Head-workers . 

a. The upper class. 
i. Gentle work. 
X. Book-readers. 
y. Chemists. 
z. Artists. 

2. Hand-workers. 

a. The lower class. 
i. Rough work. 
X. Ditch-diggers. 
y. Mechanical engineers. 
z. Iron-moulders. 
6. How Hand-workers are to be paid, 
refreshed, and amused : — 
i. Better salaries. 
ii. Regular times of rest, 
iii. Gardens, flowers, and sunshine. 
IV. (§§ 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51.) Wise 
Workers and Foolish Workers. 
1. Wise Workers. 

a. Workers ivith God. 
i. Enforce justice. 
ii. Enforce tidiness, 
iii. Enforce fruitfulness. 
6. Wise work is : — 
i. Honest. 

X. Fair play in games. 
y: Fair play in work. 
ii. Useful. 

X. Time of self not wasted. 
y. Time of others not wasted. 



XX INTRODUCTION 

iii. Cheerful, as a child's work is. 
X. Right childhood is : — 

1. Modest. 

2. Faithful. 

3. Loving. 

4. Cheerful. 

(In § 51, Ruskin changes these characteristics to Humil- 
ity, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness.) 
2. Foolish workers. 

a. Workers against God. 
i. Permit injustice. 
ii. Permit disorder. 
iii. Permit death. 



SUBJECTS FOR COMPOSITION 

These subjects, both in number and variety, are in- 
tended to enable pupils, in various sections of country 
and in the various high school grades and college classes, 
to select something of special interest to write about. 

I. Work 

1. The purpose of an education. 

2. Why should the " laboring class " be educated ? 

3. Outdoor games that are helpful. 

4. "Making" money, and "winning" money. 

5. Shooting song-birds, and harmless animals not 

needed for food. 

6. The tradesmen, and other laborers, upon whom 

the professional man depends. 

7. Should a rich man desire to die poor? 

8. Helping the poor. 



INTRODUCTION xxi 

9. The idle poor ; the idle rich. 

10. Noble and ignoble hands. 

IL Children playing in the streets. 

12. Wise work and foolish work. 

13. Humility, faith, and charity, without cheerfulness. 

14. Talk and talkers. 

II. Traffic 

1. Good taste. 

2. How to learn to like to do right. 

3. ''Steel-traps! for whom?" 

4. Day-dreams. 

5. Cotton factories. 

6. Iron foundries. 

7. Can a boy choose his future ? 

8. Usury. 

9. "Driving a bargain." 

10. Should they "take who have the power," and 

should " they keep who can " ? 

11. Thrift. 

12. That which is not needed is high at any price. 

13. The Chinese proverb : " He who keeps a shop should 

smile." 

14. Billboards. 

III. War 

1. Noble and ignoble warfare. 

2. The "Golden Rule." 

3. Why " seek peace and pursue it " ? 

4. The folly of betting. 

5. " It is better to receive an injury than to inflict one." 

6. The home life of some celebrated warrior. 



xxii INTRODUCTION 

7. A hero in the private ranks. 

8. How savages settle their disputes. 

9. PugiHsm as a profession. 

10. The Hague : arbitration. 

11. Does a large navy insure peace with foreign na- 

tions ? 

12. Waterloo. 

13. Bunker Hill. 

14. " First in war, first in peace, and first in the hearts 

of his countrymen.'' 

IV. Athena in the Heavens 

1. Animal life and health. 

2. Fresh air ; how, where, and why to get it. 

3. Sleep as Nature's restorer. 

4. A poem on The Shepherd of the Clouds. 

5. Sincere song : why sing at all ? 

6. National anthems. 

7. Song-birds. 

8. Shade-trees. 

9. "The race is not to the swift." 

10. An American hero. 

11. A city without a park. 

12. Wild flowers. 

13. "When I behold a rainbow." 

14. "Under the open sky." 

V. Athena in the Earth 

1. Seed-sowing. 

2. Nutting time. 

3. The flower-garden. 



INTRODUCTION xxiii 

4. A country feast. 

5. Food sources. 

6. A poem : When it Rains. 

7. Christmas when grandfather was a boy. 

8. "Eyes have they but they see not." 

9. ''Lowly" hving and high thinking. 

10. The future of the farmer's son. 

11. ''MaudMuller." 

12. Harvesting in the West. 

13. A world without grass. 

14. "Fletcherism." 



VI. Athena in the Heakt 

1. Rules for happy Hving. 

2. The slothful man. 

3. Road-making. 

4. Aladdin's palace. 

5. The prodigal son. 

6. Arguments for liberty. 

7. The influence of "disorder and ghastliness" on 

young life. 

8. Common sense, and the use of it. 

9. The Olympic games. 

10. Field-day sports. 

11. A favorite landscape. 

12. "A simple English [or American] girl, of pure race 

and kind heart." 

13. An admired work of art, 

14. "This one thing I do." 



xxiv INTRODUCTION 

BIBLIOGRAPHY » 
A. Ruskin's Writings 

The following is a list of Ruskin's chief works in the 
order of publication, with statements, here and there, as 
to when they were written : — 

1834-1846. I. Articles on science and art in the Archi- 
tectural Magazine and the Magazine of Natural History. 
II. Poems in London Monthly Miscellany and Friendship's 
Offering, also the Newdigate Prize Poem, Salsette and 
Elephanta, printed separately, also in Oxford Prize Poems. 

1837. The Poetry of Ai'chitecture, in Architectural 
Magazine. 

1843. Modern Painters. Vol. I. (written 1842); 
1846. Vol. II. (written 1845). 

1856. Vols. III. and IV. (written 1855). 1860. Vol. V. 
The Autograph Edition was published in 1873, and there 
have been many editions and reprints since. 

1849. The Seven Lamps of Architecture (written 
1847). 

1850. Poems, by J. R. 

1851. The King of the Golden River (written 1840 or 
1841). 

The Stones of Venice (written 1850). 

Notes on the Construction of Sheepfolds. 

Pre-Raphaelitism. 
1853. Stones of Venice. Vols. II. and III. (written 
1852). 
1853-1860. Giotto and his Works in Padua. 

^ Compiled, with slight alterations and additions, from Bates's 
Bibliography. See acknowledgment, Introduction, p. xviii. 



INTRODUCTION XXV 

1854. Lectures on Architecture and Painting. 

1856. Modern Painters. Vols. III. and IV. (written 
1855). 

The Harbors of England. 

1857. Elements of Drawing (written 1856). 

The Political Economy of Art. Reprinted under 
the title, A Joy Forever {and its Price in the 
Market). Education in Art. 

1859. The Two Paths. 
Elements of Perspective. 

1860. Modern Painters, Vol. V. 
Unto this Last. 

1862-1863. Munera Pulveris (written 1861). 

1865. Sesame and Lilies. First two lectures (written 
1864). 

1866. Ethics of the Dust. 

Crown of Wild Olive (written 1864). 

1867. Time and Tide by Weare and Tyne. 
1869. The Queen of the Air. 
1871-1884. Fors Clavigera. 
1870-1872. Aratra Pentehci. 

The Relation between Michael Angelo and Tintoret. 

The Eagle's Nest. 
1873. Love's Meinie, Parts I. and II. 

Ariadne Florentina (written 1872). 
1873-1874. Val-d'Arno. 
1875-1877. Mornings in Florence. 
1875-1886. Proserpina. 
1875-1878. Deucalion. 
1877-1884. St. Mark's Rest. 
1877-1878. The Laws of Fesole. 
1880. Elements of Enghsh Prosody. 

Arrows of the Chace. 



xxvi INTRODUCTION 

1880-1885. The Bible of Amiens. 
1881. Love's Meinie, Part III. 

1883. The Art of England. 

1884. The Storm Cloud of the Nineteenth Century. 
1884-1885. The Pleasures of England. 

1885. On the Old Road. 
1886-1888. Prseterita. 

1886. Dilecta. 
Hortus Inclusus. 

1890. Ruskiana. 

1891. The Poems of John Ruskin. 

B. Writings about Ruskin 

Among the best biographies and sketches of Ruskin are 
the following : The Life of John Ruskin, by W. G. Col- 
hngwood (Houghton, Mifflin Co.); John Ruskin, M. H. 
Spielmann (Lippincott & Co.) ; John Ruskin, his Life and 
Teaching, T. Marshall Mather (Warne & Co.) ; Ruskin 
et la Religion de la Beaute, Robert de la Sizeranne (Ha- 
chette et Cie) ; John Ruskin, Aspects of his Thounht and 
Teaching, Baillie; Work of John Ruskin, Charles Wald- 
stein (Harper and Brothers) ; Studies in Ruskin, Edward 
T. Cook (George Allen) ; Joh7i Ruskin, Mrs. Me3mell 
(Dodd, Mead and Company). Ruskin is discussed also in 
Modern Humanists, John M. Robertson (Swan Sonnen- 
schein & Co.). Poole's Index to Periodical Literature may 
be consulted for the long list of interesting magazine 
articles that have appeared, from time to time, on Ruskin, 
The Man, The Artist, The Political Economist, The Writer, 
etc. Bates's Bibliography gives a list of the magazine 
articles of especial interest which appeared during the 
year 1900, and prior to that time. 



INTRODUCTION 



XXVll 



RUSKIN AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES 



Thomas Carlyle . . . 






. 1795-1881 


J. M. W. Turner . . . 






1775-1851 


Alfred Tennyson . . . 






1809-1892 


Robert Browning . . 






. 1812-1889 


John Ruskin . . , . 






. 1819-1900 


Matthew Arnold . . . 






1822-1888 


Charles Ehot Norton 






1827-1908 


Dante Gabriel Rossetti 






1828-1882 


William Morris . . . 






1834-1890 


Algernon C. Swinburne 






1837-1909. 



''Do you lookout," wrote George Eliot to her friend Miss 
Sarah Hennell, "for Ruskin 's books whenever they ap- 
pear? ... I venerate him as one of the great teachers 
of the age. . . . He teaches with the inspiration of a 
Hebrew prophet." 

''Do you read Ruskin's Fors ClavigeraP" Carlyle 
asked of Emerson. " If you don't, do, I advise you. Also 
. . . whatever else he is now writing. There is noth- 
ing going on among us as notable to me." 

— Edw^ard T. Cook, Studies in Ruskin, London, 1890, 
p. 3. 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 



THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 



INTRODUCTION ' 

1. Twenty years ago, there was no lovelier piece of 
lowland scenery in South England, nor any more pathetic 
in the world, by its expression of sweet human character 
and life, than that immediately bordering on the sources 
of the Wandel,° and including the low moors of Addington, 5 
and the villages of Beddington and Carshalton, with all 
their pools and streams. No clearer or diviner waters ever 
sang with constant lips of the hand which ''giveth rain 
from heaven° ; " no pastures ever lightened in springtime 
with more passionate blossoming ; no sweeter homes ever lo 
hallowed the heart of the passer-by with their pride 
of peaceful gladness — fain-hidden — yet full-confessed. ° 
The place remains (1870)° nearly unchanged in its larger 
features ; but with deliberate mind I say, that I have never 
seen anything so ghastly in its inner tragic meaning, — not 15 
in Pisan Maremma,° — not byCanipagna° tomb, — not by 
the sand-isles of the Torcellan° shore, — as the slow steal- 
ing of aspects of reckless, indolent, animal neglect, over the 
delicate sweetness of that English scene : nor is any blas- 
phemy or impiety, any frantic saying or godless thought, 20 

^ Called the "preface" in former editions; it is one of my bad 
habits to put half my books into preface. Of this one, the only 
prefatory thing I have to say is that most of the contents are 
stated more fully in my other volumes; but here are put in what, 
at least, I meant to be a more popular form, all but this intro- 
duction, which was written very carefully to be read, not spoken, 
and with which I have taken extreme pains.*' 

B 1 



2 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

more appalling to me, using the best power of judgment I 
have to discern its sense and scope, than the insolent defi] 
ing of those s})rings by the human herds that drink of W 
Just where the welling of stainless water, tremblinsr an^ 
5 pure, like a body of light, enters the pool of Carshalton, cue 
ting itself a radiant channel down to the gravel, through 
warp of feathery weeds, all waving, which it trav3rses with 
its deep threads of clearness, like the chalcedony^ in moss- 
agate, starred here and there with white grenouillette° ; 

lo just in the very rush and murmur of the first spreading, 
currents, the human wretches of the place cast their street 
and house foulness ; heaps of dust and slime, and broken 
shreds° of old metal, and rags of putrid clothes; which, 
having° neither energy to cart away, nor decency enough to 

15 dig into the ground, ° they thus shed into the stream, to 
diffuse what venom of it will float and melt, far away, in all 
places where God meant those waters to bring joy and 
health. And, in a little pool, behind some houses farther 
in the village, where another spring rises, the shattered 

20 stones of the well, and of the little fretted channel which 
was long ago built and traced for it by gentler hands, ° lie 
scattered, each from each, imder a ragged bank of mortar, 
and scoria, ° and bricklayer's refuse, on one side, which the 
clean water nevertheless chastises to purity; but it can- 

25 not conquer the dead earth beyond ; and there, circled and 
coiled under festering scum, the stagnant edge of the pool 
effaces itself into a slope of black slime, the accumulation 
of indolent years. ° Half-a-dozen men, with one day's 
work, could cleanse those pools, and trim the flowers about 

30 their banks, and make every breath of summer air above 
them rich with cool balm; and e\ery glittering wave 
medicinal, as if it ran, troubled only of angels, from the 
porch of Bethesda.° But that day's work is never given, 



INTRODUCTION 3 

nor, I suppose, ° will be; nor will any joy be possible to 
_ heart of man, for evermore, about those wells of English ' 
waters. 

, 2. When I last left them, I walked up slowly through 
_ the back streets of Croydon, from the old church to the s 

hospital; and, just on the left, before coming up to the 
J crossing of the High Street, there was a new public-house 
built. And the front of it was built in so wise.manner,° 
that a recess of two feet was left below its front windows, 
between them and the street-pavement ; a recess too nar- lo 
row for any possible use (for even if it had been occupied 
by a seat, as in old time it might have been, everybody 
walking along the street would have fallen over the legs 
of the reposing wayfarer). But, by way of making this 
two feet depth of freehold^ land more expressive of the is 
dignity of an establishment for the sale of spirituous liq- 
uors, it was fenced from the pavement by an imposing iron 
railing, having four or five spearheads to the yard of it, and 
six feet high ; containing as much iron and iron-work, in- 
deed, as could well be put into the space ; and by this stately 20 
arrangement, the Httle piece of dead ground" within, be- 
tween wall and street, became a protective receptacle 
of refuse ; cigar ends, and oyster shells, and the like, such 
as an open-handed° English street-populace habitually 
scatters" ; and was thus left, unsweepable b}^ any ordinary 25 
methods. Now the iron bars which, uselessly (or in great 
degree worse than uselessly), enclosed this bit of ground, 
and made it pestilent, represented a quantity of work 
which would have cleansed the Carshalton pools three 
times over: of work, partly cramped and perilous," in 30 
the mine; partly grievous and horrible," at the furnace; 
partly foolish and sedentary, of ill-taught students making 
bad designs : work from the beginning to the last fruits of 



4 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

it, and in all the branches of it, venomous, deathfuV and 
miserable. 

3.° Now, how did it come to pass that this work was 
done instead of the other; that the strength and life of 

5 the English operative were spent in defiling ground, in- 
stead of redeeming it, and in producing an entirely (in 
that place) valueless piece of metal, which can neither be 
eaten nor breathed, instead of medicinal fresh air and pure 
water ? 

lo 4. There is but one reason for it, and at present a con- 
clusive one, — that the capitalist can charge percentage 
on the work in the one case, and cannot in the other. If, 
having certain funds for supporting labor at my disposal, 
I pay men merely to keep my ground in order, my money 

15 is, in that function, spent once for all ; but if I pay them to 
dig iron out of my ground and work it, and sell it, I can 

^ A fearful occurrence took place a few days since, near Wolver- 
hampton. Thomas Snape, aged nineteen, was on duty as the 
"keeper"' of a blast furnace at Deepfield, assisted by John Gard- 
ner, aged eighteen, and Joseph Swift, aged thirty-seven. The 
furnace contained four tons of molten iron, and an equal amount 
of cinders, and ought to have been run out at 7.30 p.m. But 
Snape and his mates, engaged in talking and drinking, neglected 
their dut3% and, in the meantime, the iron rose in the furnace until 
it reached a pipe wherein water was contained. Just as the men 
had stripped, and were proceeding to tap the furnace, the water 
in the pipe, converted into steam, burst down its front and let 
loose on them the molten metal, which instantaneously con- 
sumed Gardner; Snape, terribly burnt, and mad with pain, 
leaped into the canal and then ran home and fell dead on the 
threshold. Swift survived to reach the hospital, where he died 
too. 

In further illustration of this matter. T beg the reader to look at 
the article on the " Decay of the English Race," in the Pall-Mail 
Gazette of April 17, of this year [1870]; and at the articles on the 
"Report of the Thames Commission," in any journals of the same 
date. 



INTRODUCTION 5 

charge rent for the ground, and percentage^ both on the 
manufacture and the sale, and make my capital profitable 
in these three by-ways. ° The greater part of the profit- 
able investment of capital, in the present day, is in opera- 
tions of this kind, in which the public is persuaded to buy 5 
something of no use to it, on production or sale of which 
the capitalist may charge percentage ; the said public re- 
maining all the while under the persuasion that the per- 
centages thus obtained are real national gains, whereas, 
they are merely filchings° out of partially light pockets, to 10 
swell heavy ones. 

5.° Thus, the Croydon publican® buys the iron railing, 
to make himself more conspicuous to drunkards. The 
public-house keeper on the other side of the way presently 
buys another railing, to out-rail° him with. Both are, as 15 
to their relative attractiveness, just where the}'^ were be- 
fore° ; but they have lost the price of the railings ; which 
they must either themselves finally lose, or make their 
aforesaid customers, the amateurs of railings, ° pay, by 
raising the price of their beer, or adulterating it. Either 20 
the publicans, or their customers, are thus poorer by "pre- 
cisely v:hat the capitalist has gained°; and the value of the 
industry itself, meantime, has been lost to the nation; 
the iron bars in that form and place being wholly useless. 

6. It is this mode of taxation of the poor by the rich 25 
which is referred to in the text (§ 34), in comparing the 
modern acquisitive power of capital with that of the lance 
and sword; the only difference being that the levy of 
blackmail® in old times was by force, and is now by cozen- 
ing.® The old rider and reiver® frankly quartered® him- 30 
self on the publican for the night ; — the modern one 
merely makes his lance into an iron spike, and persuades 
his host to buy it. One comes as an open robber,® the 



6 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

other as a cheating pedler; but the result, to the injured 
person's pocket, is absohitely the same. Of course many 
useful industries mingle with, and disguise the useless 
ones ; and in the habits of energy aroused by the struggle, 
^ there is a certain direct good. It is better to spend four 
thousand pounds in making a gun, and then to blow it to 
pieces, than to pass life in idleness. Only do not let the 
proceeding° be called "political economy. "° 

7. There is also a confused notion in the minds of many 

lo persons, that the gathering of the property of the poor into 
the hands of the rich does no ultimate harm; since, in 
whosesoever hands it may be, it must be spent at last, and 
thus, they think, return to the poor again. This fallacy 
has been again and again exposed ; but granting the plea 

15 true, the same apolog}^ may, of course, be made for black- 
mail, or any other form of robbery. It might be (though 
practically it never is) as advantageous for the nation that 
the robber should have the spending of the money he ex- 
torts, as that the person robbed should have spent it. 

20 But this is, no excuse for the theft. ° If I were to put a 
turnpike° on the road where it passes my own gate, and 
endeavor to exact a shilling from every passenger, the 
public would soon do away with my gate, without hstening 
to any plea on my part that 'it was as advantageous to 

25 them, in the end, that I should spend their shillings, as that 
they themselves should.' But if, instead of outfacing^ 
them with a turnpike, I can only persuade them to come 
in and buy stones, or old iron, or any other useless thing, 
out of my ground, I may rob them to the same extent, and 

30 be, moreover, thanked as a public benefactor, and pro- 
moter of commercial prosperity. And this main question 
for the poor of England — for the poor of all countries — 
is wholly omitted in every common treatise on the subject 



INTRODUCTION 7 

of wealth. Even by the laborers themselves, the opera- 
tion of capital is regarded only in its effect on their imme- 
diate interests ; never in the far more terrific power of its 
appointment of the kind and the object of labor. It 
matters little, ultimately, how much a laborer is paid for 5 
making anything ; but it matters fearfully what the thing 
is, which he° is compelled to make. If his labor is so or- 
dered as to produce food, and fresh air, and fresh water, no 
matter that his wages are low ; — the food and fresh air 
and water will be at last there ; and he will at last get them, ic 
But if he is paid to destroy^ food and fresh air, or to pro- 
duce iron bars instead of them, — the food and air will 
finally not be there, and he will not get them, to his great 
and final inconvenience. ° 

8.° I have been long accustomed, as all men engaged in 15 
work of investigation must be, to hear my statements 
laughed at for years before they are examined or believed ° ; 
and I am generally content to wait the public's time. But 
it has not been without displeased surprise that I have 
found myself totally unable, as yet, by any repetition, or 20 
illustration, to force this plain thought into my readers' 
heads, — that the wealth of nations, as of men, consists in 
substance, not in ciphers; and that the real good of all 
work, and of all commerce, depends on the final intrinsic" 
worth of the thing you make, or get by it. This is a " prac- 25 
tical'^ enough statement, one would think: but the 
English public has been so possessed by its modern school 
of economists" with the notion that Business is always good, 
whether it be busy in mischief or in benefit ; and that buy- 
ing and selling are always salutary, whatever the intrinsic 30 
worth of what you buy or sell, that it seems impossible to 
gain so much as a patient hearing for any inquiry respect- 
ing the substantial result of our pager modern labor." 



8 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

9. I have never felt more checked by the sense of this 
impossibihty than in arranging the heads° of the following 
lectures, which, though delivered at considerable inter- 
vals of time, and in different places, were not prepared 

5 without reference to each other. Their connection would, 
however, have been made far more distinct, if I had not 
been prevented, by what I feel to be another great difficulty 
in addressing English audiences, from enforcing, with any 
decision, the common, and to me the most important, part 

lo of their subjects. I chiefly desired° to question my 
hearers — operatives, merchants, and soldiers — as to 
the ultimate meaning of the business they had in hand ; 
and to know from them what they expected or intended 
their manufacture to come to, their selling to come to, and 

15 their killing to come to. That appeared the first point 
needing determination before I could speak to them with 
any real utility or effect. "You craftsmen — salesmen 
— swordsmen, — do but tell me clearly what you want ; 
then, if I can say anything to help you, I will ; and if not, 

20 I will account to you as I best may for my inability." 

10. But in order to put this question into any terms, one 
had first of all to face the difficulty^ — to me for the 
present insuperable, — th? difficulty of knowing whether 
to address one's audience as believing, or not believing, in 

25 any other world than this. For if you address any average 
modern English company as beheving in an Eternal life, 
and then° endeavor to draw any conclusions, from this 
assumed belief, as to their present business, they will forth- 
with tell you that 'Svhat you say is very beautiful, but it 

30 is not practical." ° If, on the contrary, you frankly ad- 
dress them as wwbelievers° in Eternal life, and try to 
draw any consequences from that unbelief, — they im- 
mediately hold you for an accursed person, and shake off 
the dust from their feet at you.° 



INTRODUCTION 9 

11. And the more I thought over what I had got° to 
say, the less I found I could say it, without some reference 
to this intangible or intractable c|uestion.° It made all 
the difference, in asserting any principle of war, whether 
one assumed that a discharge of artillery would merely 5 
knead down a certain quantity of once living clay into a 
level line, as in a brick-field ; or w^hether, out of every sepa- 
rately Christian-named portion of the ruinous heap, there 
went out, into the smoke and dead-fallen air of battle, some 
astonished condition of soul, unwillingly released. It 10 
made all the difference, in speaking of the possible range 
of commerce, whether one assumed that all bargains re- 
lated only to visible property — or whether property, for 
the present invisible, ° but nevertheless real, was elsewhere 
purchasable on other terms. It made all the difference, in 15 
addressing a body of men subject to considerable hardship, 
and having to find some way out of it — w^hether one could 
confidently say to them, " My friends, — you have only to 
die, and all will be right " ; or whether one had any secret 
misgiving that such advice was more blessed to him that 20 
gave, than to him that took it.° 

12. And therefore the dehberate reader will find, 
throughout these lectures, a hesitation in driving points 
home, and a pausing short of conclusions which he will 
feel I would fain have come to ; — hesitation which arises 25 
wholly from this uncertainty of my hearers' temper. 
For I do not speak, nor have I ever spoken, since the time 
of first forward youth, ° in any proselyting temper, as 
desiring to persuade any one to believe anything^; but 
whomsoever I venture to address, I take for the time his 3° 
creed° as I find it, and endeavor to push it into such vital 
fruit as it seems capable of. Thus, it is a creed with a great 
part of the existing English people, that they are in pos- 



10 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

session of a book which tells them, straight from the lips 
of God, all they ought to do, and need to know. I have 
read that book, with as much care as most of them, for 
some forty years° ; and am thankful that, on those who 

5 trust it, I can press its pleadings. My endeavor has been 
uniformly to make them trust it more deeply than they do ; 
trust it, not in their own favorite verses only, but in the 
sum of all ; trust it not as a fetish ° or talisman, ° which they 
are to be saved by daily repetitions of ; but as a Captain's 

lo order, to be heard and obeyed at their peril. I was always 
encouraged by supposing my hearers to hold such belief. 
To these, if to any, I once had hope of addressing, with ac- 
ceptance, words which insisted on the guilt of pride, and 
the futihty of avarice ; from these, if from any, I once ex- 

15 pected ratification of a political economy, which asserted 
that the Hfe was more than the meat, and the body than 
raiment° ; and these, it once seemed to me, I might ask, 
without being accused of fanaticism, ° not merely in doc- 
trine of the lips, but in the bestowal of their heart's 

20 treasure, to separate themselves from the crowd of whom 
it is written, "After all these things do the Gentiles seek."° 
13.° It cannot, however, be assumed, with any sem- 
blance of reason, that a general audience is now wholly, or 
even in majority, composed of these religious persons. A 

25 large portion must always consist of men who admit no 
such creed ; or who, at least, are inaccessible to appeals 
founded on it. And as, with the so-called Christian, I 
desired to plead for honest declaration and fulfilment of 
his belief in life, — with the so-called Infidel, I desired 

30 to plead for an honest declaration and fulfilment of his 
belief in death. The dilemma is inevitable. Men must 
either hereafter Hve, or hereafter die ; fate may be bravely 
met, and conduct wisely ordered, on either expectation; 



INTRODUCTION 11 

but never in hesitation between ungrasped hope, and un- 
confronted fear. We usually believe in immortality, so 
far as to avoid preparation for death ; and in mortality, 
so far as to avoid preparation for anything after death. 
Whereas, a wise man will at least hold himself ready for 5 
one or other of two events, of which one or other is inevit- 
able ; and will have all things ended in order° for his sleep, 
or left in order for his awakening. 

14.° Nor have w^ any right to call it an ignoble judg- 
aient, if he determine to end° them in order, as for sleep. 10 
A brave belief in life is indeed an enviable state of mind, 
but, as far as I can discern, an unusual one. I know few 
Christians so convinced of the splendor of the rooms in 
their Father's house, ° as to be happier when their friends 
are called to those mansions, than they would have been 15 
if the Queen had sent for them to live at court° : nor has 
the Church's most ardent "desire to depart, and be with 
Christ, "° ever cured it of the singular habit of putting on 
mourning for every person summoned to such departure. 
On the contrary, a brave belief in death has been assuredly 20 
held by many not ignoble persons, and it is a sign of the 
last depravity in the Church itself, when it assumes that 
such a belief is inconsistent with either purity of character, 
or energy of hand. The shortness of life is not, to any 
rational person, a conclusive reason for wasting the space 25 
of it which may be granted him ; nor does the anticipation 
of death to-morrow suggest, to any one but a drunkard, ° 
the expediency of drunkenness to-day. To teach that 
there is no device in the grave, ° may indeed make the de- 
viceless person more contented in his dulness ; but it will 30 
make the deviser only more earnest in devising ; nor i's hu- 
man conduct likely, in every case, to be purer, under the 
conviction that all its evil may in a moment be pardoned, 



12 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

and all its wrong-doing in a moment redeemed ; and that 
the sigh of repentance, which purges the guilt of the past, 
will waft the soul into a felicity which forgets its pain, — ■ 
than it may be under the sterner, and to many not unwise 

5 minds, more probable, apprehension, that ''what a man 
soweth that shall he also reap "° — or others reap, — when 
he, the living seed of pestilence, walketh no more in dark- 
ness, ° but lies down therein. 

15.° But to men for whom feebleness of sight, or bitter- 

lo ness of soul, or the offence° given by the conduct of those 
who claim higher hope, may have rendered this painful 
creed the only possible one, there is an appeal to be made, 
more secure than any which° can be addressed to hap- 
pier persons. Might not a preacher, in comfortless but 

15 faithful zeal — from the poor height of a grave-hillock for 
his Hill of Mars, ° and with the Cave of the Eumenides° at 
his side — say to them° : Hear me, you dying men, who 
will soon be deaf forever. For these others, at your right 
hand and your left, who look forward to a state of infinite 

20 existence, in which all their errors will be overruled, and all 
their faults forgiven ; — for these, who, stained and black- 
ened in the battle smoke of mortality, have but to dip 
themselves for an instant in the font of death, and to rise 
renewed of plumage, as a dove that is covered with silver, 

25 and her feathers like gold : — for these, indeed, it may be 
permissible to waste their numbered moments, through 
faith in a future of. innumerable hours; to these, in their 
weakness, it may be conceded that they should tamper 
with sin which can only bring forth fruit of righteousness, ° 

30 and profit by the iniquity which, one day, will be remem- 
bered no more.° In them, it may be no sign of hardness 
of heart to neglect the poor, over whom they know their 
Master is watching, and to leave those to perish tempora- 



INTRODUCTION 13 

rily, who cannot perish eternally. But, for you° there is 
no such hope, and therefore no such excuse. This fate, 
which you ordain for the wretched, you believe to be all 
their inheritance ; you may crush them, before the moth,° 
and they will never rise to rebuke you ; — their breath, s 
which fails for lack of food,° once expiring, will never be 
recalled to whisper° against you a word of accusing ; — 
they and you, as you think, shall lie down together in the 
dust,° and the worms cover you° ; and for them there shall 
be no consolation, and on you no vengeance, — only the lo 
question murmured above your grave: "Who shall repay 
him what he hath done ? " Is it therefore easier for you in 
your heart to inflict the sorrow for which there is no remedy ? 
Will you take, wantonly, this little all of his life from your 
poor brother, and make his brief hours long to him with 15 
pain? Will you be more prompt to the injustice which 
can never be redressed ; and more niggardly ° of the mercy 
which you can bestow but once, and which, refusing, you 
refuse forever? 

16. I think better of you, even of the most selfish, than 20 
that you would do this, well understanding your act.° 
And for yourselves, it seems to me, the question becomes 
not less grave when brought° into these curt limits. If 
your life were but a fever fit,° — the madness of a night, 
whose follies were all to be forgotten in the dawn, it might 25 
matter little how you fretted away the sickly hours, — 
what toys you snatched at, or let fall, — what visions you 
followed wistfully with the deceived eyes of sleepless 
frenzy. Is the earth only an hospital? are health and 
heaven to come° ? Then play, if you care to play, on the 30 
floor of the hospital dens. Knit its straw into what 
crowns ° please you ; gather the dust of it for treasure, and 
die rich in that, though° clutching at the black motes in the 



14 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

air with your dying hands ; — and yet, it may be well with 
you. But if this life be no° dream, and the world no hospi- 
tal, but your Palace-inheritance° ; — if all the peace and 
power and joy you can ever win, must be won now, and all 
5 fruit of victory gathered here, or never ; — will you st^ll, 
throughout the puny totality of your life, weary yourselves 
in the fire for vanity ? If there is no rest which remaineth° 
for you, is there none you might presently take ? was this 
grass of the earth made green for your shroud only, not for 

loyour bed? and can you never lie down upon it, but only 
under it? The heathen, in their saddest hours, thought 
not so.° They knew that life brought its contest, but they 
expected from it also the crown° of all contest : No proud 
one ! no jewelled circlet flaming through Heaven above 

15 the height of the unmerited throne ; only some few leaves 
of wild olive, ° cool to the tired brow, through a few years 
of peace. It should have been of gold, they thought; 
but Jupiter was poor°; this was the best the god could 
give them. Seeking a better than this, they had known 

20 it a mockery. Not in war, not in wealth, not in tyranny, 
was there any happiness to be found for them — only in 
kindly peace, fruitful and free. The wreath was to be of 
w'?7(/ olive, ° mark you: — the tree that grows carelessly, 
tufting the rocks with no vivid bloom, no verdure of 

25 branch; only with soft snow of blossom, and scarcely ful- 
filled fruit, mixed with gray leaf and thornset stem ; no fas- 
tening of diadem for you but with such sharp embroidery ! 
But this, such as it is, you may win while yet you hve ; type 
of gray honor and sweet rest.^ Free-heartedness, and 

30 graciousness, and undisturbed trust, and requited love, 
and the sight of the peace of others, and the ministry to 
their pain ; ^ these, and the blue sky above you, and the 
1 /ieXtT6e(r(ra, aid\(av 7' ivcKey.** 



INTRODUCTION 15 

sweet waters and flowers of the earth beneath ; and mys- 
teries and presences, innumerable, of hving things, — 
may yet be here your riches° ; untormenting and divine : 
seviceable for the Hfe that now is ; nor, it may be, without 
promise of that which is to come.° 



LECTURE I 
WORK 

Delivered before the Working Men's Institute, at Camber- 
well [1865] 

17. My Friends, — I have not come among you to- 
night to endeavor to give you an entertaining lecture; 
but to tell you a few plain facts, and ask you a few plain 
questions. ° I have seen and known too much of the 
struggle for life among our laboring population, to feel at 5 
ease, under any circumstances, in inviting them to dwell 
on the triviahties of my own studies; but, much more, 
as I meet to-night, for the first time, the members of a 
working Institute established in the district in which I 
have passed the greater part of my life, I am desirous 10 
that we should at once understand each other, on graver 
matters. I would fain tell you, with what feehngs, and 
with what hope, I regard this Institute, as one of many 
such, now happily established throughout England, as 
well as in other countries ; and preparing the way for a 15 
great change in all the circumstances of industrial life ; 
but of which the success must wholly depend upon our 
clearly understanding the conditions, and above all, the 
necessary limits of this change. No teacher can truly 
c 17 



18 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

promote the cause of education, until he knows the mode 
of Hfe for which that education is to prepare his pupil. 
And the fact that he is called upon to address you, nomi- 
nally, as a ''Working Class," must compel him, if he is 
5 in any wise earnest or thoughtful, to inquire in the outset, 
on what you yourselves suppose this class distinction has 
been founded in the past, and must be founded in the 
future. The manner of the amusement, and the matter 
of the teaching, which any of us can offer you, must 

lo depend wholly on our first understanding from you, 
whether you think the distinction heretofore drawn be- 
tween working men and others is truly or falsely founded. 
Do you accept it as it stands ? do you wish it to be modi- 
fied? or do you think the object of education is to efface 

15 it, and make us forget it forever? 

18. Let me make myself more distinctly understood. 
We call this — you and I — a "Working Men's" Insti- 
tute, and our college in London, a "Working Men's" 
College. Now, how do you consider that these several 

20 institutes differ, or ought to differ, from "idle men's" 
institutes and "idle men's" colleges? Or by what other 
word than "idle" shall I distinguish those whom the 
happiest and wisest of working men do not object to call 
the " Upper Classes " ? Are there necessarily upper classes ? 

25 necessarily lower° ? How much should those always be 
elevated, how much these always depressed ? And I pray 
those among my audience who chance to occupy, at 
present, the higher position, to forgive° me what offence 
there may be in what I am going to say. It is not / who 

30 wish to say it. Bitter voices say it ; voices of battle and 
of famine through all the world, which must be heard 
some day, whoever keeps silence. Neither, as you well 
know, is it to you specially that I say it. I am sure that 



WORK 19 

most now present know their duties of kindness, and fulfil 
them, better perhaps than I do mine. But I speak to you 
as representing your whole class, which errs, I know, 
chiefly by thoughtlessness, but not therefore the less terri- 
bly. Wilful error is limited by the will, but what limit 5 
is there to that of which we are unconscious? 

19. Bear with me, therefore, while I turn to these 
workmen, and ask them what they think° the "upper 
classes" are, and ought to be, in relation to them. An- 
swer, you workmen who are here, as you would among 10 
yourselves, frankly ; and tell me how you would have me 
call your employers. ° Am I to call them — would you 
think me right in calling them — the idle classes° ? I think 
you would feel somewhat uneasy, and as if I were not 
treating my subject honestly, or speaking from my heart, 15 
if I proceeded in my lecture under the supposition that 
all rich people were idle. You would be both unjust and 
unwise if you allowed me to say that ; — not less unjust 
than the rich people who say that all the poor are idle, 
and will never work if they can help it, or more than 20 
they can help. 

20.^ ° For indeed the fact is, that there are idle poor 
and idle rich; and there are busy poor and busy rich. 
Many a beggar is as lazy as if he had ten thousand a year ; 
and many a man of large fortune is busier than his errand- 25 
boy, and never would think of stopping in the street to 
play marbles. ° So that, in a large view, the distinction 
between workers and idlers, as between knaves and honest 
men, runs through the very heart and innermost nature 
of men of all ranks and in all positions. There is a work- 3^ 

* Note this paragraph. I cannot enough wonder at the want 
of common charity which blinds so many people to the quite 
simple truth to which it refers. 



20 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

ing class — strong and happy, — among both rich and 
poor ; there is an idle class — weak, wicked, and miser- 
able, — among both rich and poor. And the worst of 
the misunderstandings arising between the two orders 

5 come of the unlucky fact that the wise of one class Plow 
little wise in this !]° habitually contemplate the foolish of 
the other. If the busy rich people watched and rebuked 
the idle rich people, all would be right among them° : and 
if the busy poor people watched and rebuked the idle poor 

lo people, all would be right among them. But each looks° 
for the faults of the other. A hard-working man of 
property is particularly offended by an idle beggar; and 
an orderly, but poor, workman is naturally intolerant of 
the licentious luxury of the rich. And what is severe 

15 judgment in the minds of the just men of either class, 
becomes fierce enmity in the unjust — but among the 
unjust only. None but the dissolute among the poor look 
upon the rich as their natural enemies, or desire to pillage 
their houses and divide their property. None but the 

20 dissolute among the rich speak in opprobrious terms of 
the vices and follies of the poor. 

21. There is, then, no worldly distinction° between 
idle and industrious people ; and I am going to-night to 
speak only of the industrious. The idle people we will put 

25 out of our thoughts at once — they are mere nuisances — 
what ought to be done with them, we'll talk of at another 
time. But there are class distinctions among the in- 
dustrious themselves ; — tremendous distinctions, which 
rise and fall to every degree in the infinite thermometer of 

30 human pain and of human power, — distinctions of high 
and low, of lost and won, to the whole reach of man's soul 
and body. 

22. These separations we will study, and the laws of 



WORK 21 

them, among energetic men only, who, whether they work 
or whether they pla.y, put their strength into the work, 
and their strength into the game ; being in the full sense of 
the word "industrious,'' one way or another, — with 
purpose, or without. And these distinctions are mainly 5 
four : — 

I. Between those who work, and those who play. 
II. Between those who produce the means of life, and 
those who consume them. 

III. Between those who work with the head, and those 10 
who work with the hand. 

IV. Between those who work wisely, and those who 
work foolishly. 

For easier memory, let us say we are going to oppose, in 
our examination, — 15 

I. Work to play ; 
II. Production to consumption ; 

III. Head to hand ; and, 

IV. Sense to nonsense. 

23. I. First, then, of the distinction between the 20 
classes who work and the classes who play. Of course we 
must agree upon a definition° of these terms, — work and 
play, — before going farther. Now, roughly, not with 
vain subtlety of definition, but for plain use of the words, 
*'play" is an exertion of body or mind, made to please 25 
ourselves, and with no determined end ; and work is a 
thing done because it ought to be done, and with a deter- 
mined end. You play, as you call it,° at cricket, for in- 
stance. That is as hard work as anything else ; but it 
amuses you, and it has no result but the amusement. If 30 
it were done as an ordered form of exercise, for health's 
sake, it would become work directly. So, in like manner, 
whatever we do to please ourselves, and only for the sake 



22 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

of the pleasure, not for an ultimate object, is '^play," the 
"pleasing thing," not the useful thing. Play may be use- 
ful in a secondary sense (nothing is indeed more useful or 
necessary) ; but the use of it dej^ends on its being sponta- 
5 neous. 

24.° Let us, then, inquire together what sort of games 

the playing class in England spend their lives in playing at. 

The first of all English games is making money. That 

is an all-absorbing game ; and we knock each other down 

lo oftener in playing at that than at football, or any other 
roughest sport ; and it is absolutely without purpose ; 
no one who engages heartily in that game ever knows why. 
Ask a great money-maker what he wants to do with his 
money — he never knows. He doesn't make it to do 

15 anything with it. He gets it only that he may get it. 
''What will you make of what you have got?" you ask. 
"Well, I'll get more,"° he says. Just as, at cricket, you 
get more runs. There's no use in the runs, but to get more 
of them than other people is the game. And there's no 

20 use in the money, but to have more of it than other people 
is the game. So all that great foul city of London there, — 
rattling, growling, smoking, stinking, — a ghastly heap of 
fermenting brickwork, pouring out poison at every pore, 
— you fancy it is a city of work ? Not a street of it ! It is 

25 a great city of play ; very nasty play, and very hard play, 
but still play. It is only Lord's cricket ground without 
the turf, — a huge billiard table without the cloth, and 
with pockets as deep as the bottomless pit ; but mainly a 
billiard table, after all. 

30 25. Well, the first great English game is this playing 
at counters. It differs from the rest in that it appears 
always to be producing money, while every other game is 
expensive. But it does not always produce money. 



WOBK 23 

There's a great difference betweerx "winning" money and 
''making" it^ a great difference between getting it out of 
another man's pocket into om's, or fiUing both.° 

26. Our next great Enghsh games, however, hunting 
and shooting, are costly altogetlier ; and how much we are 5 
fined for them annually in land, horses, gamekeepers, and 
game laws, and the resultant demoralization of ourselves, 
our children, and our retainers, ° and all else that accom- 
panies that beautiful° and special English game, I will not 
endeavor to count now : but note only that, except for 10 
exercise, this is not merely a useless game, but a deadly 
one, to all connected with it. For through horse-racing, 
you get every form of what the higher classes everywhere 
call "Play," in distinction from all other plays; that 
is, gambling° ; and through game-preserving, you get also 15 
some curious laying out of ground ; that beautiful arrange- 
ment of dwelling-house for man and beast, by which we 
have grouse and black-cock — so many brace to the acre, 
and men and women — so many brace° to the garret. I 
often wonder what the angelic builders and surveyors — 20 
the angelic builders who build the "many mansions "° up 
above there; and the angelic surveyors, who measured 
that four-square city° with their measuring reeds — I 
wonder what they think, or are supposed to think, of the 
laying out of ground by this nation.* 25 

27. Then, next to the gentlemen's game of hunting, 
we must put the ladies' game of dressing. It is not the 
cheapest of games. ° And I wish I could tell you what this 
"play" costs, altogether, in England, France, and Russia 

^ The subject is pursued at some length in Fors Clavigera for 
March, 1873 ; but I have not yet properly stated the opposite side 
of the question nor insisted on the value of uncultivated land to 
the national health of body and mind. 



24 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

annually. But it is a pretty game, and on certain terms 
I like it ; nay, I don't see it played quite ^s much as I 
would fain have it. You ladies like to lead the fashion : — 
by all means lead it — lead it thoroughly, — lead it far 
5 enough. Dress yourselves nicely, and dress everybody 
else nicely. Lead the fashions for the poor first ; make them 
look well, and you yourselves will look, in ways of which 
you have now no conception, all the better. The fashions 
you have set° for some time among your peasantry are not 

lo pretty ones ; their doublets are too irregularly slashed, or 
as Chaucer calls it "all toslittered," though not for 
''queintise,"° and the wind blows too frankly through 
them. 

28. Then there are other games, wild enough, as I 

15 could show you if I had time. 

There's playing at Uterature, and playing at art ; — very 
different, both, from w^orking at literature, or working at 
art, but I've no time to speak of these. I pass to the great- 
est of all, — the play of plays, the great gentlemen's game, 

20 which ladies Hke them best to play at, — the game of War. 
It is entrancingly pleasant to the imagination^ ; we dress 
for it, however, more finely than for any other sport ; and 
go out to it, not merely in scarlet, as to hunt, but in scarlet 
and gold, and all manner of fine colors ; of course we could 

25 fight better in gray, and without feathers ; but all nations 
have agreed that it is good to be well dressed at this play. 
Then the bats and balls ° are very costly ; our English and 
French bats, with the balls and wickets, even those which 
we don't make any use of, costing, I suppose, now, about 

30 fifteen millions of money annually to each nation ; all 
which you know is paid for by hard laborer's work in the 
furrow and furnace. A costly game ! — not to speak of 
its consequences; I will say at present nothing of these 



WORK 25 

The mere immediate cost of all these plays is what I want 
you to consider ; they are all paid for in deadly work some- 
where, as many of us know too well. The jewel-cutter, 
whose sight fails over the diamonds ; the weaver, whose 
arm fails over the web ; the iron-forger, whose breath fails 5 
before the furnace — they know what work is — they, who 
have all the work, and none of the play, except a kind they 
have named for themselves down in the black north coun- 
try, where "play" means being laid up by sickness. It 
is a pretty example for philologists, ° of varying dialect, 10 
this change in the sense of the word, as used in the black 
country of Birmingham, ° and the red and black country 
of Baden Baden. ° Yes, gentlemen, and gentlewomen, of 
England, who think "one moment unamused a misery, not 
made for feeble man," this is what you have brought the is 
word "play" to mean, in the heart of merry England! 
You may have your fluting and piping ; but there are sad 
children sitting in the market-place, who indeed cannot 
say to you, "We have piped unto you, and ye have not 
danced°:" but eternally shall say to you, "We have 20 
mourned unto you, and ye have not lamented." 

29. This, then, is the first distinction between the 
"upper and lower" classes. And this is one which is by 
no means necessary; which indeed must, in process of 
good time, be by all honest men's consent abolished. Men 25 
will be taught that an existence of play, sustained by the 
blood of other creatures, is a good existence for gnats and 
jelly-fish° ; but not for men : that neither days, nor lives, 
can be made holy or noble by doing nothing in them : that 
the best prayer at the beginning of a day is that we may 30 
not lose its moments ; and the best grace before meat, the 
consciousness that we have justly earned our dinner. And 
when we have this much of plain Christianity preached to 



26 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

us again, and cease to translate the strict words, ° "Son, go 
work to-day in my vineyard, "° into the dainty ones: 
"Baby, go play to-day in my vineyard," we shall all be 
workers, in one way or another ; and this much at least of 

5 the distinction between "upper" and "lower" forgotten. 
30. II. I pass then to our second distinction ; between 
the rich and poor, between Dives and Lazarus, ° — dis- 
tinction which exists more sternly, I suppose, in this day, 
than ever in the world. Pagan or Christian, till now. 

lo Consider, for instance, what the general tenor of such a 
paper as the Morning Post implies of delicate luxury 
among the rich ; and then read this chance extract° from 
it: — 

"Yesterday morning, at eight o'clock, a woman, pass- 

15 ing a dung-heap in the stone-yard near the recently erected 
almshouses in Shadwell Gap, High Street, Shadwell, called 
the attention of a Thames police-constable to a man in a 
sitting position on the dung-heap, and said she was afraid 
he was dead. Her fears proved to be true. The wretched 

20 creature appeared to have been dead several hours. He 
had perished of cold and wet, and the rain had been beat- 
ing down on him all night. The deceased was a bone- 
picker. ° He was in the lowest stage of poverty, poorly 
clad, and half-starved. The police had frequently driven 

25 him away from the stone-yard, between sunset and sunrise, 
and told him to go home. He selected a most desolate 
spot for his wretched death. A penny and some bones 
were found in his pockets. The deceased was between fifty 
and sixty years of age. Inspector Roberts, of the K 

30 division, has given directions for inquiries to be made at 
the lodging-houses respecting the deceased, to ascertain 
his identity if possible." — Morning Post, November 25, 
1864. 



WORK 27 

Compare the statement of the finding bones in his 
pocket with the following, from the Telegraph of Janu- 
ary 16 of this year : — 

"Again, the dietary scale for adult and juvenile paupers 
was drawn up by the most conspicuous political econo- 5 
mists in England. It is low in quantity, but it is sufficient 
to support nature ; yet within ten years of the passing of 
the Poor Law Act,° we heard of the paupers in the Andover 
Union gnawing the scraps of putrid flesh and sucking the 
marrow from the bones° of horses which they were em- 10 
ployed to crush." 

You see my reason for thinking that our Lazarus of 
Christianity has some advantage over the Jewish one. 
Jewish Lazarus expected, or at least prayed, to be fed with 
crumbs from the rich man's table°; but our Lazarus is fed 15 
with crumbs from the dog's table. 

3L Now this distinction between rich and poor rests on 
two bases. Within its proper limits, on a basis which is 
lawful and everlastingly necessary; beyond them, on a 
basis unlawful, and everlastingly corrupting the frame- 20 
work of society. The lawful basis of wealth is, that a 
man who works should be paid the fair value of his work ; 
and that if he does not choose to spend it to-day, he should 
have free leave to keep it, and spend it to-morrow. Thus, 
an industrious man working daily, and laying by daily, 25 
attains at last the possession of an accumulated sum of 
wealth, to which he has absolute right. The idle person 
who will not work, and the wasteful person who lays noth- 
ing by, at the end of the same time will be doubly poor — 
poor in possession, and dissolute in moral habit; and he 30 
will then naturally covet the money which the other has 
saved. And if he is then allowed to attack the other, and 
rob him of his well-earned wealth, there is no more any 



28 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

motive for saving, or any reward for good conduct ; and all 
society is thereupon dissolved, or exists only in systems 
of rapine. ° Therefore the first necessity of social life is 
the clearness of national conscience in enforcing the law — 
5 that he should keep who has justly earned. 

32. That law, I say, is the proper basis of distinction 
between rich and poor. But there is also a false basis of 
distinction; namely, the power held over those who are 
earning° wealth by those who already possess it, and only 

lo use it to gain more.° There will be always a number of 
men who would fain set themselves to the accumulation of 
wealth as the sole object of their hves. Necessarily, that 
class of men is an uneducated class, inferior in intellect, 
and more or less cowardly. It is physically impossible for 

15 a well-educated, intellectual, or brave man to make money 
the chief object of his thoughts; just as it is for him to 
make his dinner the principal object of them. All healthy 
people Hke their dinners, but their dinner is not the main 
object of their lives. So all healthily-minded people like 

20 making money — ought to like it, and to enjoy the sensa- 
tion of winning it ; but the main object of their life is not 
money; it is something better than money. A good 
soldier, for instance, mainly wishes to do his fighting well. 
He is glad of his pay — very properly so, and justly grum- 

25 bles when you keep him ten years without it° — still, his 
main notion of life is to win battles, not to be paid for win- 
ning them. So of clergymen. They like pew-rents, and 
baptismal fees, of course; but yet, if they are brave and 
well-educated, the pew-rent is not the sole object of their 

30 lives, and the baptismal fee is not the sole purpose of the 
baptism ; the clergyman's object ° is essentially to baptize 
and preach, not to be paid for preaching. So of doctors. 
They like fees° no doubt, — ought to like them ; yet if 



WORK 29 

they are brave and well-educated, the entire object of 
their lives is not fees. They, on the whole, desire to cure 
the sick ; and, — if they are good doctors, and the choice 
were fairly put to them, — would rather cure their patient 
and lose their fee, than kill him, and get it. And so with 5 
all other brave and rightly-trained men ; their work is first, 
their fee second — very important always, but still second. 
But in every nation, as I said, there are a vast class who 
are ill-educated, cowardly, and more or less stupid. And 
with these people, just as certainly the fee is first, and the 10 
work second, as with brave people the work is first and the 
fee second. And this is no small distinction. It is between 
life and death in a man, between heaven and hell /or him. 
You cannot serve two masters° : — you must serve one or 
other. If your work is first with you, and your fee second, 15 
work is your master, and the lord of work, who is God. 
But if your fee is first with you, and your work second, fee 
is your master, and the lord of fee, who is the Devil ; and 
not only the Devil, but the lowest of devils — the "least 
erected fiend that fell."° So there you have it in brief 20 
terms : Work first — you are God's servants ; Fee first — 
you are the Fiend's. And it makes a difference, now and 
ever, believe me, whether you serve Him who has on His 
vesture and thigh written, "King of Kings,"° and whose 
service is perfect freedom; or him on whose vesture and 25 
thigh the name is written, "Slave of Slaves," and whose 
service is perfect slavery. 

33. However in every nation there are, and must al- 
ways be, a certain number of these Fiend's servants, who 
have it principally for the object of their lives to make 3c 
money. They are always, as I said, more or less stupid, 
and cannot conceive of anything else so nice as money. 
Stupidity is always the basis of the Judas bargain." We 



30 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

do great injustice to Iscariot,° in thinking him wicked 
above all common wickedness. He was only a common 
money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, did not under- 
stand Christ ; — could not make out the worth of Him, or 
5 meaning of Him. He never thought He would be killed. ° 
He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be 
killed ; threw his money away instantly, and hanged him- 
self. How many of our present money-seekers, think 
you, would have the grace to hang themselves, whoever 

lo was killed ? But Judas was a common, selfish, muddle- 
headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the bag of 
the poor, not caring for them. Helpless to understand 
Christ, ° yet believed in Him, much more than most of 
us do ; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite 

15 strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas, might 
as well make his own little by-perquisites out of the affair. 
Christ would come out of it well enough, ° and he have his 
thirty pieces. Now, that is the money-seeker's idea, all 
over the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but can't under- 

20 stand Him — doesn't care for Him — sees no good in that 
benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at 
all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass 
of men, you have a certain number of bagmen — your 
''fee-first" men, whose main object is to make money. 

25 And they do make it — make it in all sorts of unfair ways, 
chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or what is 
called the power of capital; that is to say, the power 
which money, once obtained, has over the labor of the poor, 
so that the capitalist can take all its produce to himself, 

30 except the laborer's food. That is the modern Judas's 
way of "carrying the bag,"° and "bearing what is put 
therein." 

34. Nay, but (it is asked) how is that an unfair advan- 



WORK 31 

tage ? Has not the man who has worked for the money a 
right to use it as he best can ? No, in this respect, money 
is now exactly what mountain promontories over pubUc 
roads were in old times. The barons fought for them 
fairly : — the strongest and cunningest° got them ; then 5 
fortified them, and made every one who passed below pay 
toll. Well, capital now is exactly what crags were then. 
Men fight fairly (we will, at least, grant so much, though 
it is more than we ought) for their money ; but, once hav- 
ing got it, the fortified millionaire can make everybody lo 
who passes below pay toll to his million, and build another 
tower of his money castle. And I can tell you, the poor 
vagrants by the roadside suffer now quite as much from 
the bag-baron, as ever they did from the crag-baron. 
Bags and crags have just the same result on rags.° I have 15 
not time, however, to-night to show you in how many 
ways the power of capital is unjust; but remember this 
one great principle° — you will find it unfailing" — that 
whenever money is the principal object of life with either 
man or nation, it is both got ill, and spent ill ; and does 20 
harm both in the getting and spending ; but when it is not 
the principal object, it and all other things will be well got 
and well spent. And here is the test, with every man, of 
whether money is the principal object with him, or not. 
If in mid-fife he could pause and say, "Now I have enough 25 
to live upon, I'll live upon it ; and having well earned it, 
I will also well spend it, and go out of the world poor, as I 
came into it," then money is not principal with him; but 
if, having enough to live upon in the manner befitting his 
character and rank, he still wants to make more, and to 30 
die rich, then money is the principal object with him, and 
it becomes a curse to himself, and generally to those who 
spend it after him. For you know it must be spent some 



32 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

day ; the only question is whether the man who makes it 
shall spend it, or some one else, and generally it is better 
for the maker to spend it, for he will know best its value 
and use.° And if a man does not choose thus to spend his 
5 money, he must either hoard it or lend it, and the worst 
thing he can generally do is to lend it ; for borrowers are 
nearly always ill-spenders, and it is with lent money that 
all evil is mainly done, and all unjust war protracted. 

35. For observe what the real fact is, respecting loans 
lo to foreign military governments, and how strange it 

is. If your little boy came to you to ask for money 
to spend in squibs and crackers, you would think twice 
before you gave it him, and you would have some idea 
that it was wasted, when you saw it fly off in fireworks, 

15 even though he did no mischief with it. But the Russian 
children and Austrian children come to you, borrowing 
money, not to spend in innocent squibs, but in cartridges 
and bayonets to attack you in India with, and to keep 
down all noble life in Italy with, and to murder Polish 

20 women and children with ; and that you will give at once, 
because they pay you interest for it. Now, in order to 
pay you that interest, they must tax every working peas- 
ant in their dominions ; and on that work you live. You 
therefore at once rob the Austrian peasant, assassinate or 

25 banish the Polish peasant, and you live on the produce of 
the theft, and the bribe for the assassination ! That is the 
broad fact — that is the practical meaning of your foreign 
loans, and of most large interest of money ; and then you 
quarrel with Bishop Colenso,° forsooth, as if he denied the 

30 Bible, and you believed it ! though, every deliberate act 
of your lives is a new defiance of its primary orders. ° 

36. III. I must pass, however, now to our third con- 
dition of separation, between the men who work with the 
hand and those who work with the head.° 



WORK 33 

And here we have at last an inevitable distinction. 
There must be work done by the arms, or none of us could 
live. There must be work done by the brains, or the life 
we get would not be worth having. And the same men 
cannot do both. There is rough work to be done, and s 
rough men must do it ; there is gentle work to be done, and 
gentlemen must do it ; and it is physically impossible 
that one class should do, or divide, the work of the other. 
And it is of no use to try to conceal this sorrowful fact by 
fine words, and to talk to the workman about the honor- lo 
ableness of manual labor, and the dignity of humanity. ° 
Rough work, honorable or not, takes the life out of us; 
and the man who has been heaving clay out of a ditch all 
day, or driving an express train against the north wind all 
night, or holding a collier's helm° in a gale on a lee-shore,°or 15 
whirling white-hot iron at a furnace mouth, is not the same 
man at the end of his day, or night, as one who has been 
sitting in a quiet room, with everything comfortable about 
him, reading books, or classing butterflies, or painting 
pictures. °^ If it is any comfort to you to be told that the 20 
rough work is the more honorable of the two, I should be 
sorry to take that much of consolation from you ; and in 
some sense I need not. The rough work is at all events 
real, honest, and, generally, though not always, useful; 
while the fine work is, a great deal of it, foolish and false 25 
as well as fine, and therefore dishonorable : but when both 
kinds are equally well and worthily done, the head's is 
the noble work, and the hand's the ignoble. ° Therefore, 
of all hand work whatsoever, necessary for the maintenance 
of life, those old words, "In the sweat of thy face thou 30 
shalt eat bread, "° indicate that the inherent nature of it is 

* Compare § 57. 



34 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

one of calamity : and that the ground, cursed for our sake, 
casts also some shadow of degradation into our contest with 
its thorn and its thistle ; so that all nations have held their 
days honorable, or "holy," and constituted them " holy- 
5 days" or " hoUdays," by making them days of rest; and 
the promise, which, among all our distant hopes, seems to 
cast the chief brightness over death, is that blessing of the 
dead who die in the Lord, that "they rest from their labors, 
and their works do follow them."° 

lo 37. And thus the perpetual question and contest must 
arise, who is to do this rough work ? and how is the worker 
of it to be comforted, redeemed, and rewarded ? and what 
kind of play should he have, and what rest, in this world, 
sometimes, as well as in the next ? Well, my good labori- 

15 ous friends, ° these questions will take a little time to 
answer yet. They must be answered : all good men are 
occupied with them, and all honest thinkers. There's 
grand head work doing° about them ; but much must be 
discovered, and much attempted in vain, before anything 

20 decisive can be told you. Only note these few particulars, 
which are already sure. 

38. As to the distribution of the hard work. None of 
us, or very few of us, do either hard or soft work° because 
we think we ought ; but because we have chanced to fall 

25 into the way of it, and cannot help ourselves. ° Now, no- 
body does anything well that they cannot help doing: 
work is only done well when it is done with a will ; and no 
man has a thoroughly sound will unless he knows he is 
doing what he should, and is in his place. And, depend 

30 upon it, all work must be done at last, not in a disorderly, 
scrambling, doggish way, but in an ordered, soldierly, 
human way° — a lawful or "loyal" way.° Men are 
enlisted for the labor that kills — the labor of war : they 



WORK 35 

are counted, trained, fed, dressed, and praised for that. 
Let them be enlisted also for the labor that feeds°: let 
them be counted, trained, fed, dressed, praised for that. 
Teach the plough exercise as carefully as you do the sword 
exercise, and let the officers of troops of life be held as 5 
much gentlemen as the officers of troops of death ; and all 
is done : but neither this, nor any other right thing, can be 
accomplished — you can't even see your way to it — un- 
less, first of all, both servant and master are resolved that, 
come what will of it, they will do each other justice. ° 10 

39. People are perpetually squabbling about what will 
be best to do, or easiest to do, or advisablest to do, or profit- 
ablest to do ; but they never, so far as I hear them talk, 
ever ask° what it is just to do. And it is the law of heaven 
that you shall not be able to judge what is wise or easy, 15 
unless you are first resolved to judge what is just, and to 
do it. That is the one thing constantly reiterated by our 
Master — the order of all others that is given oftenest — 
"Do justice and judgment. "° That's your Bible order; 
that's the "Service of God," — not praying nor psalm- 20 
singing. You are told, indeed, to sing psalms° when you 
are merry, and to pray when you need anything°; and, 
by the perverseness of the Evil Spirit, we get to think that 
praying and psalm-singing are "service." If a child finds 
itself in want of anything, it runs in and asks its father 25 
for it — does it call that doing its father a service ? If it 
begs for a toy or a piece of cake — does it call that serving 
its father? That, w^ith God, is prayer, and He hkes to 
hear it° : He likes you to ask Him for cake when you want 
it; but He doesn't call that "serving Him." Begging is 3° 
not serving : God likes mere beggars as little as you do — 
He likes honest servants, not beggars. So when a child 
loves its father very much, and is very happy, it may sing 



36 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

little songs about him; but it doesn't call that serving 
its father°; neither is singing songs about God, serving 
God. It is enjoying ourselves, if it's anything ; most prob- 
ably it is nothing ° ; but if it's anything, it is serving our- 

5 selves, not God. And yet we are impudent enough to call 
our be'ggings and chantings "Divine service:" we say 
"Divine service will be 'performed'" (that's our word — 
the form of it gone through) ° "at so-and-so o'clock."^ 
Alas! unless we perform Divine service in every willing 

loact of hfe, we never perform it at all. The one Divine 
work — the one ordered sacrifice — is to do justice ; and 
it is the last we are ever inchned to do. Anything rather 
than that ! As much charity° as you choose, but no justice. 
"Nay," you will say, "charity is greater than justice." 

15 Yes, it is greater; it is the summit of justice — it is the 
temple of which justice is the foundation. But you can't 
have the top without the bottom ; you cannot build upon 
charity. You must build upon justice, for this main 
reason, that you have not, at first, charity to build with. 

20 It is the last reward of good work. Do justice to your 
brother (you can do that, whether you love him or not), 
and you will come to love him. But do injustice to him, 
because you don't love him°; and you will come to hate 
him. 

25 40. It is all very fine to think you can build upon 
charity to begin with; but you will find all you will 
have got° to begin with, begins at home,° and is essen- 
tially love of yourself. You well-to-do people, for in- 
stance, who are here to-night, will go to " Divine service" 

30 next Sunday, all nice and tidy, and your Httle children 
will have their tight little Sunday boots on, and lovely 
little° Sunday feathers in their hats; and you'll think, 
complacently and piously, how lovely they look going 



WOEK 37 

to church in their best ! So they do : and you love them 
heartily, and you like sticking feathers in their hats. 
That's all right : that is charity ; but it is charity begin- 
ning at home. Then you will come to the poor little cross- 
ing-sweeper, ° got up also, — it, in its Sunday dress, — s 
the dirtiest rags it has, — that it may beg the better : 
you will give it a penny, and think how good you are,° 
and how good God is to prefer your child to the crossing- 
sweeper and bestow on it a divine hat, feathers, and boots, 
and the pleasure of giving pence instead of begging for lo 
them.° That's charity going abroad. But what does 
Justice say, walking and watching near us? Christian 
Justice has been strangely mute, and seemingly bHnd°; 
and, if not blind, decrepit, this many a day : she keeps her 
accounts still, however — quite steadily — doing them at 15 
nights, carefully, with her bandage off, and through 
acutest spectacles (the only modern scientific invention 
she cares about). You must put your ear down ever so 
close to her lips to hear her speak ; and then you will start 
at what she first whispers, for it will certainly be, ''Why 20 
shouldn't that little crossing-sweeper have a feather on 
its head, as well as your own child ? " Then you may ask 
Justice, in an amazed manner, "How she can possibly be 
so fooHsh as to think children could sweep crossings with 
feathers on their heads ? "° Then you stoop again, and 25 
Justice says — still in her dull, stupid way — "Then, 
why don't you, every other Sunday, leave your child to 
sweep the crossing, and take the little sweeper to church 
in a hat and feather?" Mercy on us (you think), what 
will she say next? And you answer, of course, that "you 30 
don't, because everybody ought to remain content in the 
position in which Providence has placed them." Ah, 
my friends, that's the gist of the whole question. Did 



38 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

Providence put them in that position, or did ydu ? You 
knock a man into a ditch, and then you tell him to remain 
content in the "position in which Providence has placed 
him." That's modern Christianity. ° You say — " We 
5 did not knock him into the ditch." We shall never know 
what you have done or left undone, ° until the question 
with us every morning, is not how to do the gainful thing, 
but how to do the just thing during the day ; nor until 
we are at least so far on the way to being Christian, as to 

lo acknowledge that maxim of the poor half-way Mahometan, 
"One hour in the execution of justice is worth seventy 
years of prayer." 

41. Supposing, then, we have it determined with ap- 
propriate justice, ivho is to do the hand work, the next 

15 cjuestions must be how the hand-workers are to be paid, 
and how they are to be refreshed, and what play they are 
to have. Now, the possible quantity of play depends on 
the possible quantity of pay ; and the quantity of pay is 
not a matter for consideration to hand-workers only, but to 

20 all workers. Generally, good, useful work, whether of the 
hand or head, is either ill-paid, or not paid at all. I don't 
say it should be so, but it always is so. People, as a rule, 
only pay for being amused or being cheated, ° not for being 
served. Five thousand a year to your talker, ° and a 

25 shilling a day to your fighter, digger, and thinker, is the 
rule. None of the best head work in art, literature, or 
science, is ever paid for. How much do you think Homer 
got for his Iliad° ? or Dante for his Paradise° ? only 
bitter bread and salt, and going up and down other people's 

30 stairs. In science, the man who discovered the telescope,° 
and first saw heaven, was paid with a dungeon ; the man 
who invented the microscope, ° and first saw earth, died 
of starvation, driven from his home. It is indeed very 



WORK 39 

clear that God means all thoroughly good work and talk 
to be done for nothing. ° Baruch,° the scribe, did not 
get a penny a line for writing Jeremiah's second roll for 
him, I fancy; and St. Stephen^ did not get bishop's pay 
for that long sermon of his to the Pharisees ; nothing but 5 
stones. For, indeed, that is the world-father 's° proper 
payment. So surely as any of the world's children work 
for the world's good, honestly, with head and heart ; and 
come to it, saying, "Give us a Httle bread, just to keep 
the life in us," the world-father answers them, "No, my 10 
children, not bread; a stone, ° if you like, or as many as 
you need, to keep you quiet° and tell to future ages, how 
unpleasant you made yourself to the one you Hved in."° 
42. But the hand-workers are not so ill off as all this 
comes to. The worst that can happen to you is to break 15 
stones ; not be broken by them. And for you there will 
come a time for better payment° ; we shall pay people not 
quite so much for talking in Parliament and doing nothing, 
as for holding their tongues out of it and doing something ; 
we shall pay our ploughman a little more, and our lawyer 20 
a little less, and so on : but, at least, we may even now take 
care that whatever work is done shall be fully paid for; 
and the man who does it paid for it, not somebody else; 
and that it shall be done in an orderly, soldierly, well- 
guided, wholesome way, under good captains and lieu- 25 
tenants of labor; and that it shall have its appointed 
times of rest, and enough of them; and that in those 
times the play shall be wholesome play, not in theatri- 
cal gardens, with tin flowers and gas sunshine, and girls 
dancing because of their misery ; but in true gardens, 30 
with real flowers, and real sunshine, and children dancing 
because of their gladness; so that truly the streets shall 
be full (the "streets," mind you, not the gutters) of 



40 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

children, playing in the midst thereof. ° We may take 
care that working-men shall have at least as good books 
to read as anybody else, when they've time to read them ; 
and as comfortable firesides to sit at as anybody else, 
5 when they've time to sit at them. This, I think, can be 
managed for you, my laborious friends, ° in the good time. 
43. IV. I must go on, however, to our last head, con- 
cerning ourselves all, as workers. What is wise work, and 
what is foolish work° ? What the difference between sense 

10 and nonsense, in daily occupation? 

There are three tests of wise work: — that it must be 
honest, useful, and cheerful. 

i. It is HONEST. I hardly know an^'-thing more strange 
than that you recognize honest}'' in play, and you do not 

15 in work. In your lightest games, you have always some 
one to see what you call "fair-play." In boxing, you 
must hit fair ; in racing, start fair. Your English watch- 
word is "iair-play," your Enghsh hatred, " iou\-play.''° 
Did it never° strike you that you wanted another watch- 

20 word also, "fair-work," and another and bitterer^ hatred — 
"iou\-work"°? Your prize-fighter has some honor in him 
yet ; and so have the men in the ring round him : they 

■ will judge him to lose the match, by foul hitting. But 
your prize-merchant gains his match by foul selling, and 

25 no one cries out against that. You drive a gambler out of 
the gambling-room who loads dice,° but you leave a trades- 
man in flourishing business who loads scales° ! For ob- 
serve, all dishonest dealing is loading scales. What 
difference does it make° whether I get short weight, adul- 

30 terate substance, or dishonest fabric ? — unless that flaw 
in the substance or fabric is the worse evil of the two.° 
Give me short measure of food, and I only lose by you ; but 
give me adulterate food, and I die by you. Here, then, is 



WORK 41 

your chief duty, you workmen and tradesmen — to be true 
to yourselves, and to us who would help you.° We can 
do nothing for you, nor you for yourselves, without hon- 
esty. Get that, you get all ; without that, your suffrages, 
your reforms, your free-trade measures, your institutions 5 
of science, are all in vain. It is useless to put your heads 
together, if you can't put your hearts together. Shoulder 
to shoulder, right hand to right hand, among yourselves, 
and no wrong hand° to anybody else, and you'll win the 
world yet. 10 

44. ii. Then, secondly, wise work is useful. No man 
minds, or ought to mind, its being hard, if only it 
comes to something; but when it is hard, and comes to 
nothing; when all our bees' business turns to spiders'; 
and for honey-comb we have only resultant cobweb, 15 
blown away by the next breeze — that is the cruel thing 
for the worker. Yet do we ever ask ourselves, personally, 
or even nationally, whether our work is coming to any- 
thing or not ? We don't care to keep what has been nobly 
done ; still less do we care to do nobly what others would 20 
keep ; and, least of all, to make the work itself useful in- 
stead of deadly to the doer, so as to exert° his life indeed, 
but not to waste it. Of all wastes, the greatest waste 
that you can commit is the waste of labor. If you went 
down in the morning into your dairy, and found° that 25 
your youngest child had got down before you, and that 
he and the cat were at play together, and that he had 
poured out all the cream on the floor for the cat to lap up, 
you would scold the child, and be sorry the cream° was 
wasted. But if, instead of wooden bowls with milk in 3° 
them, there are golden bowls with human life in them, 
and instead of the cat to play with — the devil to 
play with; and you yourself the player; and instead of 



42 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

leaving that golden bowl to be broken by God at the 
fountain, ° you break it in the dust yourself, and pour the 
human life° out on the ground for the fiend to lick up — 
that is no waste ! 
5 45. What! you perhaps think, "to waste the labor 
of men is not to kill them." Is it not? I should like to 
know how you could kill them more utterly — kill them 
with second deaths, seventh deaths, hundredfold deaths? 
It is the slightest way of killing to stop a man's breath. 

lo Nay, the hunger, and the cold, and the whistling bullets° 
— our love-messengers between nation and nation — 
have brought pleasant messages to many a man° before 
now ; orders of sweet release, and leave at last to go where 
he will be most welcome and most happy. At the worst 

15 you do but shorten his life,° you do not corrupt his life. 
But if you put him to base labor, if you bind his thoughts, 
if you blind his eyes, if you blunt his hopes, if you steal 
his joys, if you stunt his body, and blast his soul, and at 
last leave him not so much as strength° to reap the poor 

20 fruit of his degradation, but gather that for yourself, and 
dismiss him to the grave, when you have done with him, 
having, so far as in you lay, made the walls of that grave 
everlasting ; (though, indeed, I fancy the goodly bricks of 
some of our family vaults will hold closer° in the resurrec- 

25 tion day than the sod over the laborer's head), this you 
think is no waste and no sin ! 

46. iii. Then, lastly, wise work is cheerful, as a child's 
work is. And now I want you to take one thought home 
with you, and let it stay with you. 

30 Everybody in this room has been taught to pray daily, 
''Thy kingdom come."° Now, if we hear a man swear in 
the streets, we think it very wrong, and say he "takes 
God's name in vain."° But there's a twenty times worse 



WORK 43 

way of taking His name in vain, than that. It is to ask 
God for what we don't want. He doesn't like that sort of 
prayer. If you don't want a thing, don't ask for it: 
such asking is the worst mockery of your King you can 
insult° Him with ; the soldiers striking Him on the head 5 
with the reed° was nothing to that. If you do not wish 
for His kingdom, don't pray for it. But if you do, you 
must do more than pray for it; you must work for it. 
And, to work for it, you must know what it is : we have 
all prayed for it many a day without thinking. Observe, 10 
it is a kingdom that is to come to us ; we are not to go to 
it. Also, it is not to be a kingdom of the dead, but of the 
living. Also, it is not to come all at once, but quietly; 
nobody knows how. "The kingdom of God cometh not 
with observation." Also, it is not to come outside of us, 15 
but in our hearts : "the kingdom of God is within you."° 
And, being within us, it is not a thing to be seen, but to be 
felt ; and though it brings all substance of good with it, 
it does not consist in that: "the kingdom of God is not 
meat and drink, but righteousness, [and] peace, and joy in 20 
the Holy Ghost° :" joy, that is to say, in the holy, healthful, 
and helpful Spirit. Now, if we want to work for this king- 
dom, and to bring it, and enter into it, there's one curious 
condition° to be first accepted. You must enter it as 
children, or not at all; "Whosoever will not receive it as 25 
a little child shall not enter therein." ° And again, " Suffer 
little children to come unto me, and forbid them not, for 
of such is the kingdom of heaven." ° ^ 

47. Of such, observe. Not of children themselves, but 

^ I have referred oftener to the words of the English Bible in 
this lecture than in any other of my addresses, because I was here 
speaking to an audience which professed to accept its authority 
implicitly. 



44 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

of such as children. I beheve most mothers who read 
that text think that all heaven or the earth — when it 
gets to be like heaven ° — is to be full of babies. But 
that's not so.° " Length of days, and long life and peace, "° 
5 that is the blessing, not to die, still less to live,° in baby- 
hood. It is the character of children we want, and must 
gain at our peril ; let us see, briefly, in what it consists. 

The first character of right childhood is that it is Modest. 
A well-bred child does not think it can teach its parents, 

lo or that it knows everything. It may think its father and 
mother know everything, — perhaps that all grown-up 
people know everything; very certainly it is sure that it 
does not. And it is always asking questions, and wanting 
to know more. Well, that is the first character of a good 

15 and wise man at his work. To know that he knows very 
little ; — to perceive that there are many above him 
wiser than he; and to be always asking questions, 
wanting to learn, not to teach. No one ever teaches well 
who wants to teach, or governs well who wants to govern; 

20 it is an old saying (Plato's,° but I know not if his, first), 
and as wise as old. 

48. Then, the second character of right childhood is to 
be Faithful. Perceiving that its father knows best what 
is good for it, and having found always, when it has tried 

25 its own way against his, that he was right and it was wrong, 
a noble child trusts him at last wholly, gives him its hand, 
and will walk blindfold with him, if he bids it. And that 
is the true character of all good men also, as obedient 
workers, or soldiers under captains. They must trust 

30 their captains ; — they are bound for their lives to choose 
none but those whom they can trust. Then, they are not 
always to be thinking that what seems strange to them, 
or wrong in what they are desired to do, is strange or 



WORK 45 

wrong. They know their captain: where he leads they 
must follow, — what he bids, they must do ; and without 
this trust and faith, without this captainship and soldier- 
ship, no great deed, no great salvation, is possible to man.° 

49. Then the third character of right childhood is to be 5 
Loving. ° Give a httle love to a child, and you get a great 
deal back. It loves everything near it, when it is a right 
kind of child ; would hurt nothing, would give the best it 
has away, always, if you need it ; does not lay plans for 
getting everything in the house for itself, and delights in lo 
helping people ; you cannot please it so much as by giving 

it a chance of being useful, in ever so humble° a way. 

50. And because of all these characters, lastly, it is 
Cheerful. Putting its trust in its father, it is careful for 
nothing^ — being full of love to every creature, it is happy 15 
always, whether in its play or in its duty. Well, that's 
the great worker's character also. Taking no thought for 
the morrow ° ; taking thought only for the duty of the day ; 
trusting somebody else to take care of to-morrow ; know- 
ing indeed what labor is, but not what sorrow is ; and al- 20 
ways ready for play — beautiful play. For lovely human 
play is like the play of the Sun. There's a worker for you. 
He, steady to his time, is set as a strong man to run his 
course, but also, he rejoiceth as a strong man to run his 
course. ° See how he plays in the morning, with the mists 25 
below, and the clouds above, with a ray here and a flash 
there, and a shower of jewels everywhere ° ; — that's the 
Sun's play ; and great human play is like his — all vari- 
ous — all full of hght and life, and tender, as the dew of the 
morning. 30 

51. So then, you have the child's character in these 
four things — Humility, Faith, Charity, and Cheerfulness. 
That's what you have got to be converted to. ''Except 



46 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

ye be converted and become as little children. "° — You 
hear much of conversion nowadays; but people always 
seem to think they have got to be made wretched by 
conversion, — to be converted to long faces. No, friends, 
5 you h^xe got to be converted to short ones ; you have to 
repent into childhood, to repent into delight, and delight- 
someness. You can't go into a conventicle" but you'll 
hear plenty of talk of backshding.° Backsliding, indeed ! 
I can tell you, on the ways most of us go, the faster we 

lo slide back the better. Shde back into the cradle, if going 
on is into the grave : — back, I tell you : back — out of 
your long faces, and into your long clothes. It is among 
children only, and as cliildren only, that you will find 
medicine for your healing° and true wisdom for your teach- 

15 ing.° There is poison in the counsels of the men of this 
world ; the words they speak are all bitterness, "the poison 
of asps is under their lips,"° but, "the sucking child shall 
play by the hole of the asp."° There is death in the looks 
of men. "Their eyes are privily set against the poor°;" 

20 they are as the uncharmable serpent, the cockatrice, which 
slew by seeing. But "the weaned child shall lay his hand 
on the cockatrice den."° There is death in the steps of 
men : "their feet are swift to shed blood ; they have com- 
passed us in our steps like the lion that is greedy of his 

25 prey, and the young Hon lurking in secret places";" but, 
in that kingdom, the wolf shall lie down with the lamb, 
and the fatling with the Hon, and "a Httle child shall lead 
them."° There is death in the thoughts of men : the world 
is one wide riddle to them, darker and darker as it draws to 

30 a close ; but the secret of it is known to the child, and the 
Lord of heaven and earth" is most to be thanked in that 
"He has hidden these things from the wise and prudent, 
and has revealed them unto babes.''" Yes, and there is 



WOBK 47 

death — infinitude of death in the principaHties and 
powers° of men. As far as the east is from the west,° so 
far our sins are — not set from us, but multiplied around 
us: the Sun himself, think you he now " rejoices "° to run 
his course, when he plunges westward to the horizon, so 5 
widely red, not with clouds, but blood ?° And it will be 
red more widely yet. Whatever drought of the early and 
latter rain° may be, there will be none of that red rain.° 
You fortify yourselves, you arm yourselves against it in 
vain ; the enemy and avenger will be upon you also, unless 10 
you learn that it is not out of the mouths of the knitted 
gun, or the smoothed rifle, but "out of the mouths of 
babes and sucklings " that the strength is ordained, which 
shall "still the enemy and avenger. "° 



LECTURE II 

TRAFFIC ° 

Delivered in the Town Hall, Bradford 

52. I\Iy good Yorkshire friends, you asked me down 
here among your hills that I might talk to you about 
this Exchange" you are going to build : but earnestly 
and seriously asking you to pardon me, I am going to do 

5 nothing of the kind. I cannot talk, or at least can say 
very little, about this same Exchange. I must talk of 
quite other things, though not willingly ; — I could not 
deserve your pardon, if when you invited me to speak on 
one subject, I wilfully spoke on another. But I cannot 

lo speak, to purpose, of anything about which I do not care ; 
and most simply and sorrowfully I have to tell you, in the 
outset, that I do not care about this Exchange of yours. 

If, however, when you sent me your invitation, I had 
answered, "I won't come, I don't care about the Ex- 

15 change of Bradford," you would have been justly offended 
with me, not knowing the reasons of so blunt a carelessness. 
So I have come down, hoping that you will patiently let 
me tell you why, on this, and many other such occasions, I 
now remain silent, when formerly I should have caught at 

io the opportunity of speaking to a gracious audience. 

53. In a word, then, I do not care about this Ex- 
change, — because you don't; and because you know 
perfectly well I cannot make you. Look at the essential 

48 



TRAFFIC 49 

conditions® of the case, which you, as business men, know 
perfectly well, though perhaps you think I forget them. 
You are going to spend £30,000, which to you, collectively, 
is nothing; the buying a new coat is, as to the cost of it, 
a much more important matter of consideration to me than s 
building a new Exchange is to you. But you think you 
may as well have the right thing for your money. You 
know there are a great many odd styles of architecture 
about; you don't want to do anything ridiculous; you 
hear of me, among others, as a respectable architectural lo 
man-milliner° ; and you send for me, that I may tell you 
the leading fashion; and what is, in our shops, for the 
moment, the newest and sweetest thing in pinnacles. 

54. Now, pardon me for telling you frankly, you cannot 
have good architecture merely by asking people's advice 15 
on occasion. All good architecture is the expression of 
national life and character ; and it is produced by a preva- 
lent and eager national taste, or desire for beauty. ° And 
I want you to think a little of the deep significance of this 
word "taste"; for no statement of mine has been more 20 
earnestly or oftener controverted than that good taste is 
essentially a moral quality. "No," say many of my an- 
tagonists, "taste is one thing, morality is another. Tell us 
what is pretty : we shall be glad to know that ; but we 
need no sermons even were you able to preach them, 25 
which may be doubted. "° 

Permit me, therefore, to fortify this old dogma of 
mine somewhat. Taste is not only a part and an index of 
morahty — it is the only morahty. The first, and last, 
and closest trial question to any hving creature is, "What 30 
do you like?" Tell me what you Uke, and I'll tell you 
what you are.° Go out into the street, and ask the first 
man or woman you meet, what their "taste" is, and if 



60 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

they answer candidly, you know them, body and soul. 
'' You, my friend in the rags, with the unsteady gait, what 
do you like? " "A pipe and a quartern° of gin." I know 
you. "You, good woman, with the quick step and tidy 
5 bonnet, what do you like ? " "A swept hearth and a clean 
tea-table, and my husband opposite me, and a baby at my 
breast." Good, I know you also. "You, httle girl with 
the golden hair and the soft eyes, what do you Hke?" 
"My canary, and a run among the wood hyacinths." 

lo " You, little boy with the dirty hands and the low forehead, 
what do you Uke ? " "A shy at the sparrows, ° and a game 
at pitch farthing. "° Good; we know them all now. What 
more need we ask ? 

55. "Nay," perhaps you answer: "we need rather to 

i5 ask what these people and children do, than what they like. 
If they do right, it is no n\atter that they Hke what is wrong ; 
and if they do wrong, it is no matter that they like what is 
right. Doing is the great thing; and it does not matter 
that the man hkes drinking, so that he does not drink ; nor 

2o that the little girl likes to be kind to her canary, if she will 
not learn her lessons ; nor that the little boy likes throwing 
stones at the sparrows, if he goes to the Sunday School." 
Indeed, for a short time, and in a provisional sense, this 
is true. For if, resolutely, people do what is right, in time 

25 they come to like doing it. But they only are in a right 
moral state when they have come to like doing it ; and as 
long as they don't like it, they are still in a vicious state. 
The man is not in health of body who is always thinking 
of the bottle° in the cupboard, though he bravely bears his 

30 thirst ; but the man who heartily enjoys water in the 
morning and wine in the evening, each in its proper quan- 
tity and time. And the entire object of true education is 
to make people not merely do the right things, but enjoy 



TRAFFIC 61 

the right things — not merely industrious, but to love 
industry — not merely learned, but to love knowledge — 
not merely pure, but to love purity — not merely just, but 
to hunger and thirst after justice. ° 

56. But you may answer or think, "Is the liking for 5 
outside ornaments, — for pictures, or statues, or furniture, 
or architecture, — a moral quality ? " Yes, most surely, if 
a rightly set liking. ° Taste for any pictures or statues is 
not a moral quality, but taste for good ones is. Only here 
again we have to define the word "good." I don't mean 10 
by "good," clever — or learned — or difficult in the doing. 
Take a picture byTeniers,° of sots quarrelling over their 
dice : it is an entirely clever picture ; so clever that noth- 
ing in its kind has ever been done equal to it ; but it is also 
an entirely base and evil picture. It is an expression of 15 
delight in the prolonged contemplation of a vile thing, 
and delight in that is an "unmannered," or "immoral" 
quality. It is " bad taste " in the profoundest sense — it 

is the taste of the devils. On the other hand, a picture of 
Titian's, ° or a Greek statue, or a Greek coin, or a Turner ° 20 
landscape, expresses delight in the perpetual contempla- 
tion of a good and perfect thing. That is an entirely moral 
quahty — it is the taste of the angels. And all delight 
in fine art,° and all love of it, resolve themselves into 
simple love of that which deserves love. That deserving 25 
is the quality which we call "lovehness" — (we ought 
to have an opposite word, hateliness, to be said of the 
things which deserve to be hated) ; and it is not an in- 
different nor optional thing whether we love this or that ; 
but it is just the vital function of all our being. What 30 
we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what 
we are ; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character. 

57. As I was thinking over this, in walking up Fleet 



52 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

Street the other day, my eye caught the title of a book 
standing open in a book-seller's window. It was — ''On 
the necessity of the diffusion of taste among all classes." 
"Ah," I thought to myself, "my classifying friend, when 
5 you have diffused your taste, where will your classes be ? 
The man who likes what you like, belongs to the same class 
with you, I think. Inevitably so. You may put him to 
other work if you choose ; but, by the condition you have 
brought him into, he will dishke the other work as much 

lo as you would yourself. You get hold of a scavenger, or 
a costermonger,° who enjoyed the Newgate Calendar ° 
for hterature, and 'Pop goes the Weaser° for music. 
You think you can make him like Dante° and Beethoven° ? 
I wish you joy of your lessons° ; but if you do, you have 

15 made a gentleman of him : — he won't like to go back to his 
costermongering. " 

08. And so completely and unexceptionally is this so, 
that, if I had time to-night, I could show you that a nation 
cannot be affected by any vice, or weakness, without ex- 

20 pressing it, legibly, and forever, either in bad art, or by 
want of art; and that there is no national virtue, small 
or great, which is not manifestly expressed in all the art 
which circumstances enable the people possessing that 
virtue to produce. Take, for instance, your great English 

25 virtue of enduring and patient courage. You have at pres- 
ent in England only one art of any consequence — that is, 
iron-working. You know thoroughly well how to cast and 
hammer iron.° Now, do you think in those masses of lava 
which you build volcanic cones to melt, and which you 

30 forge at the mouths of the Infernos° you have created ; do 
you think, on those iron plates, your courage and endur- 
ance are not written forever — not merely with an iron 
pen, but on iron parchment? And take also your great 



TRAFFIC 53 

English vice — European vice — vice of all the world — 
vice of all other worlds that roll or shine in heaven, ° 
bearing with them yet the atmosphere of hell — the vice 
of jealousy, which brings competition into your commerce, 
treachery into your councils, and dishonor into your wars s 
— that vice which has rendered for you, and for your next 
neighboring nation, ° the daily occupations of existence no 
longer possible, but with the mail° upon your breasts and 
the sword loose in its sheath ; so that at last, you have 
realized for all the multitudes of the two great peoples lo 
who lead the so-called civiHzation of the earth, — you have 
realized for them all, I say, in person and in policy, what 
was once true only of the rough Border riders of your 
Cheviot hills — 

" They carved at the meal 15 

With gloves of steel, 
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd;"° — 

do you think that this national shame and dastardli- 
ness of heart are not written as legibly on every rivet of 
your iron armor° as the strength of the right hands that 20 
forged it ? 

59. Friends, I know not whether this thing be the more 
ludicrous" or the more melancholy. ° It is quite unspeak- 
ably both. Suppose, instead of being now sent for by 
you, I had been sent for by some private gentleman, living 25 
in a surburban house, with his garden separated only by a 
fruit-wall from his next door neighbor's ; and he had called 
me to consult with him on the furnishing of his drawing 
room. I begin looking about me, and find the walls 
rather bare ; I think such and such a paper might be 30 
desirable — perhaps a little fresco° here and there on the 
ceiling — a damask curtain or so at the windows. "Ah," 



54 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

says my employer, "damask curtains,° indeed! That's 
all very fine, but you know I can't afford that kind of 
thing just now!" "Yet the world credits you with a 
splendid income!" "Ah, yes," says my friend, "but do 
5 you know, at present, I am obliged to spend it nearly 
all in steel-traps ? " " Steel-traps ! for whom ? " " Why, 
for that fellow on the other side the wall, you know : we're 
very good friends, capital friends; but we are obliged to 
keep our traps set on both sides of the wall ; we could not 

lo possibly keep on friendly terms without them, and our 
spring guns.° The worst of it is, we are both clever fel- 
lows enough ; and there's never a day passes that we don't 
find out a new trap, or a new gun-barrel, or something ; 
we spend about fifteen millions a year° each in our traps, 

IS take it all together; and I don't see how we're to do with 
less." A highly comic state of life for two private gentle- 
men ! but for two nations, it seems to me, not wholly 
comic ? Bedlam° would be comic, perhaps, if there were 
only one madman in it ; and your Christmas pantomime° 

20 is comic, when there is only one clown in it ; but when the 
whole world turns clown, and paints itself red with its own 
heart's blood insead of vermilion, ° it is something else 
than comic, I think. 

60. Mind, I know a great deal of this is play, and will- 

25 ingly allow for that. You don't know what to do with 
yourselves for a sensation: fox-hunting and cricketing" 
will not carry you through the whole of this unendurably 
long mortal life : you liked pop-guns when you were school- 
boys, and rifles and Armstrongs" are only the same things 

30 better made : but then the worst of it is, that what was 
play to you when boys, was not play to the sparrows ; and 
what is play to you now, is not play to the small birds of 
State neither"; and for the black eagles," you are some- 
what shy of taking shots at them, if I mistake not. 



TRAFFIC 55 

61. I must get back to the matter in hand, however. 
Believe me, without farther° instance, I could show you, 
in all time, that every nation's vice, or virtue, was written 
in its art : the soldiership of early Greece ° ; the sensuality 
of late Italy° ; the visionary religion of Tuscany° ; the 5 
splendid human energy and beauty of Venice. ° I have 
no time to do this to-night (I have done it elsewhere be- 
fore now) ° ; but I proceed to apply the principle to our- 
selves in a more searching manner. 

I notice that among all the new buildings which cover 10 
your once wild hills, churches and schools are mixed 
in due, that is to say, in large proportion, with your mills 
and mansions; and I notice also that the churches and 
schools are almost always Gothic, ° and the mansions and 
mills are never Gothic. Will you allow me to ask precisely 15 
the meaning of this? For, remember, it is peculiarly a 
modern phenomenon. ° When Gothic was invented, houses 
were Gothic as well as churches; and when the Italian 
style° superseded the Gothic, churches were Itahan as well 
as houses. If there is a Gothic spire to the cathedral of 20 
Antwerp, ° there is a Gothic belfry to the Hotel de Ville at 
Brussels"; if Inigo Jones builds an Italian Whitehall, ° 
Sir Christopher Wren builds an Itahan St. Paul's. ° But 
now you Uve under one school of architecture, and worship 
under another. What do you mean by doing this ? Am 25 
I to understand that you are thinking of changing your 
architecture back to Gothic; and that you treat your 
churches experimentally, because it does not matter what 
mistakes you make in a church ? Or am I to understand 
that you consider Gothic a preeminently sacred and beauti- 30 
ful mode of building, which you think, like the fine frankin- 
cense, ° should be mixed for the tabernacle only, and re- 
served for your religious services ? For if this be the feel- 



56 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

ing, though it may seem at first as if it were graceful and 
reverent, at the root of the matter, it signifies neither more 
nor less than that you have separated your religion from 
your life. 
5 62. For consider what a wide significance this fact has ; 
and remember that it is not you only, but all the people of 
England, who are behaving thus just now. 

You have all got into the habit of calling the church 
"the house of God." I have seen, over the doors of many 

lo churches, the legend actually carved, " This is the house of 
God, and this is the gate of heaven. "° Now, note where 
that legend comes from, and of what place it was 
first spoken. A boy leaves his father's house to go on a 
long journey on foot, to visit his uncle° ; he has to cross a 

15 wild hill-desert ; just as if one of your own boys had to cross 
the wolds° to visit an uncle at Carlisle. ° The second or third 
day your boy finds himself somewhere between Hawes and 
Brough, in the midst of the moors, ° at sunset. It is stony 
ground, and boggy° ; he cannot go one foot farther that 

20 night. Down he hes, to sleep, on Wharnside, where best 
he may, gathering a few of the stones together to put under 
his head ; — so wild the place is, he cannot get anything 
but stones. And there, lying under the broad night, he 
has a dream; and he sees a ladder set up on the earth, 

25 and the top of it reaches to heaven, and the angels of God 
are seen ascending° and descending upon it. And when 
he wakes out of his sleep, he says, "How dreadful is this 
place; surely, this is none other than the house of God, 
and this is the gate of heaven." This place, observe; 

30 not this church ; not this city ; not this stone, even, which 
he puts up for a memorial — the piece of flint on which 
his head has lain. But this place; this windy slope of 
Wharnside; this moorland hollow, torrent-bitten, ° snow- 



TRAFFIC 67 

blighted ; this any place where God lets down the ladder. 
And how are you to know where that will be ? or how are 
you to determine where it may be, but by being ready for 
it always°? Do you know where the lightning is to fall 
next? You do know that, partly; you can guide the 5 
lightning°; but you cannot guide the going forth of the 
Spirit, ° which is as that lightning when it shines from the 
east to the west.° 

63. But the perpetual and insolent warping of that 
strong verse to serve a merely ecclesiastical purpose, 10 
is only one of the thousand instances in which we sink 
back into gross Judaism. ° We call our churches " tem- 
ples. "° Now, you know perfectly well they are not 
temples. They have never had, never can have, anything 
whatever to do with temples. They are " synagogues "° — 15 
"gathering places" — where you gather yourselves to- 
gether as an assembly; and by not calhng them so, you 
again miss the force of another mighty text — "Thou, 
when thou prayest, shalt not be as the hypocrites are ; for 
they love to pray standing in the churches "° [we should 20 
translate it], "that they may be seen of men. But thou, 
when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou 
hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father," — which is, not 
in chancel nor in aisle, but "in secret. "° 

64. Now, you feel, as I say this to you — I know you 25 
feel — as if I were trying to take away the honor of your 
churches. Not so ; I am trying to prove to you the honor 
of your houses and your hills° ; not that the Church is not 
sacred — but that the whole Earth is. I would have 
you feel, what careless, what constant, what infectious sin 30 
there is in all modes of thought, whereby, in calling your 
churches only "holy," you call your hearths and homes 
"profane"; and have separated yourselves from the 



58 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

heathen by casting all your household gods to the ground, 
instead of recognizing, in the place of their many and 
feeble Lares, the presence of your One and Mighty Lord 
and Lar.° 
5 65. " But what has all this to do with our Exchange ? " 
you ask me, impatiently. My dear friends, it has just 
everything to do with it ; on these inner and great ques- 
tions depend all the outer and little ones ; and if you have 
asked me down here to speak to you, because you had 

lo before been interested in anything I have written, you 
must know that all I have yet said about architecture was 
to show this. The book I called "The Seven Lamps "° 
was to show that certain right states of temper and moral 
feeling were the magic powers by which all good architect- 

iS ure, without exception, had been produced. "The Stones 
of Venice "° had, from beginning to end, no other aim 
than to show that the Gothic architecture of Venice had 
arisen out of, and indicated in all its features, a state of 
pure national faith, and of domestic virtue ; and that its 

2o Renaissance architecture° had arisen out of, and in all its 
features indicated, a state of concealed national infidelity, 
and of domestic corruption. And now, you ask me what 
style is best to build in ; and how can I answer, knowing 
the meaning of the two styles, but by another question — 

25 do you mean to build as Christians or as Infidels ? And 
still more — do you mean to build as honest Christians or 
as honest Infidels° ? as thoroughly and confessedly either 
one or the other? You don't like to be asked such rude 
questions. I cannot help it ; they are of much more im- 

30 portance than this Exchange business" ; and if they can 
be at once answered, the Exchange business settles itself 
in a moment. But, before I press them farther, ° I must 
ask leave to explain one point clearly. 



TRAFFIC 59 

66. In all my past work, my endeavor has been to show 
that good architecture is essentially religious — the pro- 
duction of a faithful and virtuous, not of an infidel and 
corrupted people. But in the course of doing this, I 
have had also to show that good architecture is not ec- 5 
clesiastical.° People are so apt to look upon religion as the 
business of the clergy, not their own, that the moment 
they hear of anything depending on "rehgion," they think 
it must also have depended on the priesthood ; and I have 
had to take what place was to be occupied between these 10 
two errors, and fight both, often with seeming contradic- 
tion. Good architecture is the work of good and be- 
lieving men ; therefore, you say, at least some people say, 
"Good architecture must essentially have been the work 
of the clergy, not of the laity. "° No — a thousand times 15 
no ; good architecture ^ has always been the work of the 
commonalty, not of the clergy. What, you say, those 
glorious cathedrals — the pride of Europe — did their 
builders not form Gothic architecture ? No ; they cor- 
rupted Gothic architecture. Gothic was formed in the 20 
baron's castle, ° and the burgher's street. ° It was formed 
by the thoughts, and hands, and powers of free citizens 
and warrior kings. ° By the monk it was used as an in- 
strument for the aid of his superstition ; when that super- 
stition became a beautiful madness, and the best hearts of 25 
Europe vainly dreamed and pined in the cloister,° and 
vainly raged and perished in the crusade° — through that 
fury of perverted faith and wasted war, the Gothic rose 
also to its lovehest, most fantastic, and, finally, most 
foolish dreams ; and, in those dreams, was lost. 3c 

* And all other arts, for the most part; even of incredulous and 
secularly-minded commonalties. 



60 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

67. I hope, now, that there is no risk of your misunder- 
standing me when I come to the gist° of what I want to 
say to-night; — when I repeat, that every great national 
architecture has been the result and exponent of a great 

S national religion. You can't have bits of it here, bits 
there — you must have it everywhere, or nowhere. It is 
not the monopoly of a clerical company — it is not the 
exponent of a theological dogma — it is not the hiero- 
glyphic*^ writing of an initiated priesthood ; it is the manly 
lo language of a people inspired by resolute and common 
purpose, and rendering resolute and common fidelity to the 
legible laws of an undoubted God. 

68. Now, there have as yet been three distinct schools 
of European architecture. I say, European, because Asi- 

15 atic and African architectures belong so entirely to other 
races and climates, that there is no question of them here ; 
only, in passing, I will simply assure you that what- 
ever is good or great in Egypt, ° and Syria,°and India, ° 
is just good or great for the same reasons as the build- 

20 ings on our side of the Bosphorus.° We Europeans, then, 
have had three great religions : the Greek, which was the 
worship of the God of Wisdom and Power ; the Mediaeval, ° 
which was the Worship of the God of Judgment and Con- 
solation; the Renaissance, ° which was the worship of the 

25 God of Pride and Beauty ; these three we have had, — 
they are past, — and now, at last, we English have got a 
fourth religion, and a God of our own, about which I want 
to ask you. But I must explain these three old ones first. 

69. I repeat, first, the Greeks essentially worshipped 
30 the God of Wisdom ; so that whatever contended against 

their religion, — to the Jews a stumbHng block, — was, 
to the Greeks — Foolishness ° 
The first Greek idea of Deity was that expressed in 



TRAFFIC 61 

the word, of which we keep the remnant in our words 
"Di-urnal" and "Z)i-vine" — the god of Day, Jupiter 
the revealer. Athena° is his daughter, but especially 
daughter of the Intellect, springing armed from the 
head. We are only with the help of recent investigation 5 
beginning to penetrate the depth of meaning couched 
under the Athenaic symbols : but I may note rapidly, that 
her segis,° the mantle with the serpent fringes, in which 
she often, in the best statues, is represented as folding up 
her left hand for better guard, and the Gorgon° on her 10 
shield, are both representative mainly of the chilling horror 
and sadness (turning men to stone, as it were,) of the out- 
most and superficial spheres of knowledge — that knowl- 
edge which separates, in bitterness, hardness, and sorrow, 
the heart of the full-grown man from the heart of the 15 
child. For out of imperfect knowledge spring terror, 
dissension, danger, and disdain; but from perfect knowl- 
edge, given by the full-revealed Athena, strength and 
peace, in sign of which she is crowned with the olive spray, ° 
and bears the resistless spear. 20 

This, then, was the Greek conception of purest Deity, 
and every habit of life, and ever}^ form of his art developed 
themselves from the seeking this bright, serene, resistless 
wisdom ; and setting himself, as a man, to do things ever- 
more rightly and strongly ; ^ not with any ardent affection 25 

^ It is an error to suppose that the Greek worship, or seeking, was 
chiefly of Beauty. It was essentially of Rightness and Strength, 
founded on Forethought : the principal character of Greek art is 
not Beauty, but design : and the Dorian Apollo-worship ° and 
Athenian Virgin-worship ° are both expressions of adoration of 
divine Wisdom and Purity. Next to these great deities rank, in 
power over the national mind, Dionysus ° and Ceres, ° the givers 
of human strength and life : then, for heroic example, Hercules.** 



62 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

or ultimate hope ; but with a resolute and continent energy 
of will, as knowing that for failure there was no consolation, 
and for sin there was no remission. And the Greek archi- 
tecture rose unerring, bright, clearly defined, and self- 
5 contained. 

70. Next followed in Europe the great Christian faith, 
which was essentially the religion of Comfort. Its great 
doctrine is the remission of sin3° ; for which cause it hap- 
pens, too often, in certain phases of Christianity, that sin 

lo and sickness themselves are partly glorified, as if, the more 
you had to be healed of, the more divine was the healing. 
The practical result of this doctrine, in art, is a continual 
contemplation of sin and disease, and of imaginary states 
of purification from them ; thus we have an architecture 

IS conceived in a mingled sentiment of melancholy ° and as- 
piration, ° partly severe, partly luxuriant, which will bend 
itself to every one of our needs, and everyone of our fancies, 
and be strong or weak with us, as we are strong or weak 
ourselves. It is, of all architecture, the basest, when base 

2o people build it — of all, the noblest, when built by the 
noble. 

71. And now note that both these rehgions — Greek 
and Mediaeval — perished by falsehood in their own main 
purpose. The Greek religion of Wisdom perished in a 

25 false philosophy — "Oppositions of science, falsely so 

called." The Medieval religion of Consolation perished 

. in false comfort ; in remission of sins given lyingly. It 

was the selling of absolution^ that ended the Mediaeval 

faith ; and I can tell you more, it is the selling of abso- 

30 lution which, to the end of time, will mark false Christi- 

There is no Venus-worship ° among the Greeks in the great times : 
and the Muses ° are essentially teachers of Truth, and of its har- 
monies. Compare Aratra Pentelici, § 200.° 



TRAFFIC 63 

anity. Pure Christianity gives her remission of sins 
only by ending them; but false Christianity gets her 
remission of sins by compounding^ for them. And 
there are many ways of compounding for them. We Eng- 
lish have beautiful httle quiet ways of buying absolution, s 
whether in low Church or high,° far more cunning than 
any of TetzeFs trading. ° 

72. Then, thirdly, there followed the religion of Pleas- 
ure, in which all Europe gave itself to luxury, ending in 
death. First, hols masques^ in every saloon, and then lo 
guillotines" in every square. And all these three wor- 
ships issue in vast temple building. Your Greek wor- 
shipped Wisdom, and built you the Parthenon" — the 
Virgin's temple. The Mediaeval worshipped Consolation, 
and built you Virgin temples also — but to our Lady of Sal- 15 
vation.° Then the Revivalist" worshipped beauty, of a sort, 
and built you Versailles," and the Vatican." Now, lastly, 
will you tell me what we worship, and what we build ? 

73. You know we are speaking always of the real, 
active, continual, national worship ; that by which men 20 
act while they live ; not that which they talk of when they 
die. Now, we have, indeed, a nominal religion, to which 
we pay tithes of property" and sevenths of time" ; but we 
have also a practical and earnest religion, to which we 
devote nine-tenths of our property and sixth-sevenths of 25 
our time. And we dispute a great deal about the nominal 
religion; but we are all unanimous about this practical 
one, of which I think you will admit that the ruling goddess 
may be best generally described as the " Goddess of Get- 
ting-on," or "Britannia of the Market." The Athenians 30 
had an "Athena Agoraia,"" or Athena" of the Market; 
but she was a subordinate type of their goddess, while our 
Britannia Agoraia is the principal type of ours. And all 



64 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

your great architectural works, are, of course, built to 
her.° It is long since you built a great cathedral ; and 
how you would laugh at me, if I proposed building a cathe- 
dral on the top of one of these hills of yours, to make it 

5 an Acropolis° ! But your railroad mounds, vaster than 
the walls of Babylon° ; your railroad stations, vaster than 
the temple of Ephesus,° and innumerable; your chimneys 
how much more mighty and costly than cathedral spires ! 
your harbor piers ° ; your warehouses ; your exchanges ! — 

lo all these are built to your great Goddess of '' Getting-on " ; 
and she has formed, and will continue to form, your archi- 
tecture, as long as you worship her; and it is quite vain 
to ask me to tell you how to build to her; you know far 
better than I. 

15 74. There might indeed, on some theories, be a con- 
ceivably good architecture for Exchanges — that is to 
say, if there were any heroism in the fact or deed of ex- 
change, which might be typically carved on the outside 
of your building. For, you know, all beautiful architect- 

20 ure must be adorned with sculpture or painting ; and for 
sculpture or painting, you must have a subject. And 
hitherto it has been a received opinion among the nations 
of the world that the only right subjects for either, were 
heroisms of some sort. Even on his pots and his flagons, 

25 the Greek put a Hercules slaying hons, or an Apollo ° 
slaying serpents, or Bacchus° slaying melancholy giants, 
and earth-born despondencies. On his temples, the Greek 
put contests of great warriors in founding states, or of gods 
with evil spirits. On his houses and temples alike, the 

30 Christian put carvings of angels conquering devils ; or 
of hero-martyrs exchanging this world for another; sub- 
ject inappropriate, I think, to our direction° of exchange 
here. And the Master of Christians not only left his fol- 



TRAFFIC 65 

lowers without any orders as to the sculpture of affairs of 
exchange on the outside of buildings, but gave some strong 
evidence of his dislike of affairs of exchange within them.° 
And yet there might surely be a heroism in such affairs; 
and all commerce become a kind of selling of doves, not im- 5 
pious. The wonder has always been great to me, that 
heroism has never been supposed to be in any wise con- 
sistent with the practice of supplying people with food, or 
clothes; but rather with that of quartering® one's self 
upon them for food, and stripping them of their clothes. 10 
Spoiling of armor is an heroic deed in all ages ; but the 
selling of clothes, old or new, has never taken any color 
of magnanimity. ° Yet one does not see why feeding the 
hungry and clothing the naked° should ever become base 
businesses, even when engaged in on a large scale. If one 15 
could contrive to attach the notion of conquest to them 
anyhow° ! so that, supposing there were anywhere an 
obstinate race, who refused to be comforted, one might 
take some pride in giving them compulsory comfort ° ! * 
and as it were, " occupying^ a country" with one's gifts, 20 
instead of one's armies ? If one could only consider it as 
much a victory to get a barren field sown, as to get an 
eared field stripped; and contend who should build vil- 
lages, instead of who should "carry" them° ! Are not all 
forms of heroism, conceivable in doing these serviceable 25 
deeds ? You doubt who is strongest ? It might be ascer- 
tained by push of spade, as well as push of sword. Who is 
wisest ? There are witty° things to be thought of in plan- 
ning other business than campaigns. Who is bravest? 
There are always the elements® to fight with, stronger than 30 
men ; and nearly as merciless. 

* Quite serious, all this, though it reads like jest. 
F 



6G THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

75. The only absolutely and unapproachably heroic 
element in the soldier's work seems to be — that he is 
paid little for it — and regularly ° : while you traffickers, 
and exchangers, and others occupied in presumably be- 

5 nevolent business, like to be paid much for it — and by 
chance. I never can make out how it is that a knight- 
errant° does not expect to be paid for his trouble, but a 
pedler^-QVYnni always does ; — that people are willing to 
take hard knocks for nothing, but never to sell ribands° 

lo cheap; — that they are ready to go on fervent crusades° 
to recover the tomb of a buried God,, but never on any 
travels to fulfil the orders of a living one ; — that they will 
go anywhere barefoot to preach their faith, but must 
be well bribed to practise it, and are perfectly ready 

15 to give the Gospel gratis, but never the loaves and 
fishes.^ 

76. If you chose to take the matter up on any such 
soldierly princii)le, to do your commerce, and your feed- 
ing of nations, for fixed salaries ; and to be as particular 

20 about giving people the best food, and the best cloth, as 
soldiers are about giving them the best gunpowder, ° I 
could carve something for you on your exchange worth 
looking at. But I can only at present suggest decorating 
its frieze° with pendent purses ; and making its pillars 

25 broad at the base, for the sticking of bills. ° And in the 
innermost chambers of it there might be a statue of 
Britannia of the Market, who may have, perhaps advis- 
ably, a partridge for her crest, typical at once of her 
courage in fighting for noble ideas, and of her interest in 

30 game ; and round its neck the inscription in golden letters, 

* Please think over this paragraph, too briefly and antithetically 
put, but one of those which I am happiest in having written. 



TRAFFIC 67 

"Perdix fovit quae non peperit."^ Then, for her spear, 
she might have a weaver's beam; and on her shield, in- 
steg-d of St. George's Cross, ° the Milanese boar, semi- 
fleeced, with the town of Gennesaret proper, ° in the field, ° 
and the legend "In the best market,"^ ° and her corselet, 5 
of leather, folded over her heart in the shape of a purse, 
with thirty slits° in it for a piece of money to go in at, on 
each day of the month. And I doubt not but that people 
would come to see your exchange, and its goddess, with 
applause. i° 

77. Nevertheless, I want to point out to you certain 
strange characters in this goddess of yours. She differs 
from the great Greek and Mediaeval deities essentially in 
two things — first, as to the continuance of her presumed 
power; secondly, as to the extent of it. 15 

1st, as to the Continuance. 

The Greek Goddess of Wisdom° gave continual increase 
of wisdom, as the Christian Spirit of Comfort (or Com- 
forter) continual increase of comfort. There was no ques- 
tion, with these, of any limit or cessation of function. But 20 
with your Agora Goddess, ° that is just the most important 
question. Getting on — but where to ? Gathering to- 
gether — but how much ? Do you mean to gather always 
■ — never to spend ? If so, I wish you joy of your goddess, 
for I am just as well off as you, without the trouble of 25 
worshipping her at all. But if you do not spend, some- 
body else will — somebody else must. And it is because 
of this (among many other such errors) that I have fear- 

^ Jerem. xvii. 11 (best in Septuagint and Vulgate). "As the 
partridge, fostering what she brought not forth, so he that getteth 
riches, not by right shall leave them in the midst of his days, and 
at his end shall be a fool." ° 

2 Meaning fully, "We have brought our pigs to it." , 



68 THE GROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

lessly declared your so-called science of Political Economy 
to be no science ; because, namely, it has omitted the study 
of exactly the most important branch of the busine^ — 
the study of spending. For spend you must, and as much 

5 as you make, ultimately. You gather corn : — will you 
bury England under a heap of grain ; or will you, when 
you have gathered, finally eat ? You gather gold° : — will 
you make your house-roofs° of it, or pave your streets 
with it? That is still one way of spending it. But if 

lo you keep it, that you may get more, I'll give you more ; 
I'll give you all the gold you want — all you can imagine — 
if you can tell me what you'll do with it. You shall have 
thousands of gold pieces ; — thousands of thousands — 
millions — mountains, of gold : where will you keep them ? 

15 Will you put an 01ympus° of silver upon a golden PeUon° 
— make Ossa° like a wart? Do you think the rain and 
dew would then come down to you, in the streams from 
such mountains, more blessedly than they will down the 
mountains which God has made for you, of moss and whin- 

20 stone° ? But it is not gold that you w^ant to gather ! 
What is it? greenbacks? No; not those neither. ° 
What is it then — is it cijphers after a capital I ? Cannot 
you practise writing ciphers, and write as many as you 
want ? Write ciphers for an hour every morning, in a big 

25 book, and say every evening, I am worth all those noughts 
more than I was yesterday. Won't that do ? Well, what 
in the name of Plutus is it you want°? Not gold, not 
greenbacks, not ciphers after a capital I? You will have 
to answer, after all, "No; we w^ant, somehow or other, 

so money's worth." Well, what is that? Let your Goddess 

of Getting-on discover it, and let her learn to stay therein. 

78. II. But there is yet another question to be asked 

respecting this Goddess of Getting-on. The first was of 



TRAFFIC 69 

the continuance of her power; the second is of its ex- 
tent. 

Pallas° and the Madonna° were supposed to be all the 
world's Pallas, and all the world's Madonna. They could 
teach all men, and they could comfort all men. But, 5 
look strictly into the nature of the power of your Goddess 
of Getting-on ; and you will find she is the Goddess — 
not of everybody's getting on — but only of somebody's 
getting on. This is a vital, or rather deathful,° distinction. 
Examine it in your own ideal of the state of national life 10 
which this Goddess is to evoke and maintain. I asked you 
what it was, when I was last here° ; ^ — you have never 
told me. Now, shall I try to tell you ? 

79. Your ideal of human life then is, I think, that it 
should be passed in a pleasant undulating world, ° with 15 
iron and coal ever3^where underneath it. On each pleasant 
bank of this world is to be a beautiful mansion, with two 
wings; and stables, and coach-houses; a moderately 
sized park ; a large garden and hot-houses ; and pleasant 
carriage drives through the shrubberies. In this mansion 20 
are to Hve the favored votaries^ of the Goddess; the 
English gentleman, with his gracious wife, and his beauti- 
ful family; always able to have the boudoir° and the 
jewels for the wife," and the beautiful ball dresses for 
the daughters, and hunters for the sons, and a shooting in 25 
the Highlands for himself. At the bottom of the bank, is to 
be the mill ; not less than a quarter of a mile long, with a 
steam engine at each end, and two in the middle, and a 
chimney three hundred feet high.° In this mill are to be 
in constant employment from eight hundred to a thousand 30 
workers, who never drink, never strike, always go to 

1 "The Two Paths," p. 115 (small edition), and p. 99 of vol. x, 
of the "Revised Series of the Entire Works." 



70 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

church on Sunday, and ahvays express themselves in 
respectful language. 

80. Is not that, broadly, and in the main features, 
the kind of thing you propose to yourselves? It is very 

5 pretty indeed, seen from above° ; not at all so pretty, seen 
from below. ° For, observe, while to one family this deity 
is indeed the Goddess of Getting-on, to a thousand fami- 
lies she is the Goddess of not Getting-on. '* Nay," you say, 
''they have all their chance." Yes, so has every one in a 

lo lottery, but there must always be the same number of 
blanks. ° "Ah ! but in a lottery it is not skill and intelli- 
gence which take the lead, but bhnd chance." What then ! 
do you think the old practice, that ''they should take who 
have the power, and they should keep who can,"° is less 

15 iniquitous, when the power has become power of brains 
instead of fist ? and that, though we may not take ad\'an- 
tage of a child's or a woman's weakness, we may of a man's 
foolishness ? " Nay, but finally, work must be done, and 
some one must be at the top, some one at the bottom." 

20 Granted, my friends. Work must always be, and cap- 
tains of work must always be ; and if you in the least re- 
member the tone of any of my writings, you must know 
that they are thouglit unfit for this age, because they are 
always insisting on need of government, and speaking with 

25 scorn of liberty. ° But I beg you to observe that there 
is a wide difference between being captains or governors 
of work, and taking the profits of it. It does not follow, 
because you are general of an army, that you are to take 
all the treasure, or land, it wins (if it fight for treasure or 

30 land) ; neither, because you are king of a nation, that you 
are to consume all the profits of the nation's work. Real 
kings, on the contrary, are known invariably by their 
doing quite the reverse of this, — by their taking the least 



TRAFFIC 71 

possible quantity of the nation's work for themselves. 
There is no test of real kinghood so infallible as that. 
Does the crowned creature live simply, bravely, unostenta- 
tiously ? probably he is a King. Does he cover his body 
with jewels, and his table with delicates°? in all probabil- s 
ity he is not a King. It is possible he may be, as Solomon° 
was ; but that is when the nation shares his splendor with 
him. Solomon made gold, not only to be in his own palace 
as stones, but to be in Jerusalem as stones. But even so, 
for the most part, these splendid kinghoods expire in ruin, lo 
and only the true kinghoods live, which are of royal labor- 
ers governing loyal laborers ; who, both leading rough lives, 
establish the true dynasties. Conclusively you will find 
that because you are king of a nation, it does not follow 
that you are to gather for yourself all the wealth of that 15 
nation ; neither, because you are king of a small part of 
the nation, and lord over the means of its maintenance — 
over field, or mill, or mine — are you to take all the prod- 
uce of that piece of the foundation of national existence 
for yourself. 20 

81. You will tell me I need not preach against these 
things, for I cannot mend them. No, good friends, I can- 
not ; but you can, and you will ; or something else can and 
will. Even good things have no abiding power — and 
shall these evil things persist in victorious evil°? All 25 
history shows, on the contrary, that to be the exact thing 
they never can do. Change must come ; but it is ours to 
determine whether change of growth, or change of death. 
Shall the Parthenon° be in ruins on its rock, and Bolton 
priory ° in its meadow, but these mills of yours be the con- 30 
summation of the buildings of the earth, and their wheels 
be as the wheels of eternity? Think you that "men may 
come, and men may go," but — mills — go on forever°? 



72 THE CBOWN OF WILD OLIVE 

Not so ; out of these, better or worse shall come ; and it is 
for you to choose which. 

82. I know that none of this wrong is done with deliber- 
ate purpose. I know, on the contrary, that you wish your 

5 workmen well ; that you do much for them, and that you 
desire to do more for them, if you saw your way to such 
benevolence° safely. I know that even all this wrong° 
and misery are brought about by a warped sense of duty, 
each of you striving to do his best ; but unhappily, not 

lo knowing for whom this best should be done. And all our 
hearts have been betrayed by the plausible impiety of the 
modern economist, ° that *'To do the best for yourself, is 
finally to do the best for others. "° Friends, our great 
Master said not so°; and most absolutely we shall find 

15 this world is not made so. Indeed, to do the best for 
others, is finally to do the best for ourselves ; but it will 
not do to have our eyes fixed on that issue. The Pagans° 
had got beyond that. Hear what a Pagan says of this 
matter; hear what were, perhaps, the last written words 

20 of Plato, ° — if not the last actually written (for this we 
cannot know) , yet assuredly in fact and power his parting 
words — in which, endeavoring to give full crowning and 
harmonious close to all his thoughts, and to speak the sum 
of them by the imagined sentence of the Great Spirit, his 

25 strength and his heart fail him, and the words cease, broken 
off forever. 

S3. They are at the close of the dialogue called 
''Critias,''° in which he describes, partly from real tradi- 
tion, partly in ideal dream, the early state of Athens°; and 

30 the genesis, ° and order, and religion, of the fabled isle of 
Atlantis °; in which genesis he conceives the same first 
perfection and final degeneracy of man, which in our own 
Scriptural tradition is expressed by saying that the Sons of 



TRAFFIC 73 

God intermarried with the daughters of men,° for he sup- 
poses the earhest race to have been indeed the children of 
God; and to have corrupted themselves, until "their spot 
was not the spot of his children.'' And this, he says, was 
the end; that indeed 'through many generations, so long 5 
as the God's nature in them yet was full, they were sub- 
missive to the sacred laws, and carried themselves lov- 
ingly to all that had kindred with them in divineness ; for 
their uttermost spirit was faithful and true, and in every 
wise great ; so that, in all meekness of ivisdom, they dealt 10 
with each other ° and took all the chances of life; and de- 
spising all things except virtue, they cared little what 
happened day by day, and bore lightly the burden of gold 
and of possessions ; for they saw that, if 07ily their common 
love and virtue increased, all these things would be increased 15 
together with them°; but to set their esteem and ardent pur- 
suit upon material possession would be to lose that first, 
and their virtue and affection together with it. And by 
such reasoning, and what of the divine nature remained 
in them, they gained all this greatness of which we have 20 
already told ; but when the God's part of them faded and 
became extinct, being mixed again and again, and effaced 
by the prevalent mortality" ; and the human nature at last 
exceeded, they then became unable to endure the courses 
of fortune ; and fell into shapelessness of life, and baseness 25 
in the sight of him who could see, having lost everything 
that was fairest of their honor ; while to the blind hearts ° 
which could not discern the true life, tending to happiness, 
it seemed that they were then chiefly noble and happy, 
being filled with all iniquity of inordinate possession and 30 
power. Whereupon, the God of gods, whose Kinghood 
is in laws, beholding a once just nation thus cast into 
misery, and desiring to lay such punishment upon them as 



74 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

might make them repent into restraining, gathered to- 
gether all the gods into his dwelling-place, which from 
heaven's centre overlooks whatever has part in creation; 
and having assembled them, he said " — 
5 84. The rest is silence. Last words° of the chief wisdom 
of the heathen, spoken of this idol of riches ; this idol of 
yours; this golden image high by measureless cubits, ° 
set up where your green fields of Engkand are furnace- 
burnt into the likeness of the plain of Dura°: this idol, for- 

lo bidden to us, first of all idols, by our own Master and faith° ; 
forbidden to us also by every human lip that has ever, in 
any age or people, been accounted of as able to speak ac- 
cording to the purposes of God. Continue to make that 
forbidden deity your principal one, and soon no more 

IS art, no more science, no more pleasure will be possible. 
Catastrophe will come ; or worse than catastrophe, slow 
mouldering and withering into Hades. ° But if you can 
fix some conception of a true human state of life to be 
striven for — life good for all men° as for yourselves — if 

20 you can determine some honest and simple order of ex- 
istence ; following those trodden ways of -wisdom, which 
are pleasantness, and seeking her quiet and withdrawn 
paths, which are peace * ; — then, and so sanctifying 
wealth into " commonwealth, "° all your art, your htera- 

25 ture, your daily labors, your domestic affection, and citi- 
zen's duty, will join and increase into one magnificent 
harmony. You will know then how to build, well enough ; 
you will build with stone well, but with flesh better ; tem- 
ples not made with hands, but riveted of hearts ; and that 

30 kind of marble, crimson-veined, is indeed eternal. ° 

* I imagine the Hebrew chant merely intends passionate repe- 
tition, and not a distinction of this somewhat fanciful kind; yet 
we may profitably make it in reading the English. 



LECTURE III 

WAR 

Delivered at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, 1865 

85. Young soldiers, I do not doubt but that many of 
you came unwillingly to-night, and many in merely con- 
temptuous curiosity, to hear what a writer on painting 
could possibly say, or would venture to say, respecting 
your great art of war. You may well think within your- 5 
selves, that a painter might, perhaps without immodesty, 
lecture younger painters upon painting, but not young 
lawyers upon law, nor young physicians upon medicine — 
least of all, it may seem to you, young warriors upon war. 
And, indeed, when I was asked to address you, I declined 10 
at first, and decHned long; for I felt that you would 
not be interested in my special business, and would cer- 
tainly think there was small need for me to come to teach 
you yours. Nay, I knew that there ought to be /jo such 
need, for the great veteran soldiers of England are now 15 
men every way so thoughtful, so noble, and so good, that 
no other teaching than their knightly example, ° and their 
few words° of grave and tried counsel should be either 
necessary for you, or even, without assurance of due 
modesty in the offerer, endured by you. 20 

86. But being asked, not once nor twice, I have not 
ventured persistently to refuse; and I will try, in very 
few words, to lay before you some reason why you should 

75 



76 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

accept my excuse, and hear me patiently. You may im- 
agine that your work is wholly foreign to, and separate 
from mine. So far from that, all the pure and noble arts 
of peace are founded on war; no great art ever yet rose 
5 on earth, but among a nation of soldiers. There is no 
art among a shepherd people, if it remains at peace. 
There is no art among an agricultural people, if it remains 
at peace. Commerce is barely consistent with fine art; 
but cannot produce it. Manufacture not only is unable to 

lo produce it, but invariably destroys whatever seeds of it 
exist. There is no great art possible to a nation but that 
which is based on battle. 

87. Now, though I hope you love fighting for its own 
sake, you must, I imagine, be surprised at my assertion 

IS that there is any such good fruit of fighting. You sup- 
posed, probably, that your office was to defend the works 
of peace, but certainly not to found them : nay, the 
common course of war, you may have thought, was only 
to destroy them. And truly, I who tell you this of the use 

2o of war, should have been the last of men to tell you so had 
I trusted my own experience only. Hear why: I have 
given a considerable part of my fife to the investigation of 
Venetian painting, and the result of that inquiry was my 
fixing upon one man as the greatest of all Venetians, 

25 and therefore, as I believed, of all painters whatsoever. 
I formed this faith (whether right or wrong matters at 
present nothing), in the supremacy of the painter Tin- 
toret,° under a roof covered with his pictures ; and of those 
pictures, three of the noblest were then in the form of 

30 shreds of ragged canvas, mixed up with the laths of the 
roof, rent through by three Austrian shells. Now it is not 
every lecturer who could tell you that he had seen three of 
his favorite pictures torn to rags by bomb-shells. And 



WAR 77 

after such a sight, it is not every lecturer who ivould tell 
you that, nevertheless, war was the foundation of all great 
art. 

88. Yet the conclusion is inevitable, from any careful 
comparison of the states of great historic races at different 5 
periods. Merely to show you what I mean, I will sketch 
for you, very briefly, the broad steps of the advance of the 
best art of the world. The first dawn of it is in Egypt ; and 
the power of it is founded on the perpetual contemplation 
of death, and of future judgment, by the mind of a nation to 
of which the ruling caste were priests, and the second, sol- 
diers. The greatest works produced by them are sculptures 
of their kings going out to battle, or receiving the homage 
of conquered armies. And you must remember also, as 
one of the great keys to the splendor of the Egyptian na- 15 
tion, that the priests were not occupied in theology only. 
Their theology was the basis of practical government and 
law; so that they were not so much priests as religious 
judges; the office of Samuel, ° among the Jews, being 
as nearly as possible correspondent to theirs. 20 

89. All the rudiments of art then, and much more than 
the rudiments of all science, are laid first by this great 
warrior-nation, which held in contempt all mechanical 
trades, and in absolute hatred the peaceful hfe of shep- 
herds. From Egypt art passes directly into Greece, where 25 
all poetry, and all painting, are nothing else than the de- 
scription, praise, or dramatic representation of war, or of 
the exercises which prepare for it, in their connection with 
offices of religion. All Greek institutions had first respect 
to war ; and their conception of it, as one necessary office 30 
of all human and divine life, is expressed simply by the 
images of their guiding gods. Apollo is the god of all 
wisdom of the intellect ; he bears the arrow and th.e bow. 



78 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

before he bears the lyre.° Again, Athena is the goddess 
of all wisdom in conduct. It is by the helmet and the 
shield, oftener than by the shuttle, that she is distinguished 
from other deities. 
5 90. There were, however, two great differences in princi- 
ple between the Greek and the Egyptian theories of policy. 
In Greece there was no soldier caste; every citizen was 
necessarily a soldier. And, again, while the Greeks rightly 
despised mechanical arts as much as the Egyptians, they 

lo did not make the fatal mistake of despising agricultural 
and pastoral life ; but perfectly honored both. These two 
conditions of truer thought raise them quite into the high- 
est rank of wise manhood that has yet been reached ; for 
all our great arts, and nearly all our great thoughts, have 

15 been borrowed or derived from them. Take away from 
us what they have given ; and I hardly can imagine how 
low the modern^ European would stand. 

91. Now, you are to remember, in passing to the next 
phase of history, that though you must have war to produce 

20 art — you must also have much more than war ; namely, 
an art-instinct or genius in the people ; and that, though 
all the talent for painting in the world won't make paint- 
ers of you, unless you have a gift for fighting ° as well, 
you may have the gift for fighting, and none for painting. 

25 Now, in the next great dynasty of soldiers, the art-instinct 
is wholly wanting. I have not yet investigated the Roman 
character enough to tell you the causes of this ; but I 
beheve, paradoxical^ as it may seem to you, that, however 
truly the Roman might say of himself that he was born of 

30 Mars, and suckled by the wolf ,° he was nevertheless, at 

^ The modern, observe, because we have lost all inheritance 
from Florence or Venice, and are now pensioners upon the Greeks^ 
only. 



WAR 79 

heart, more of a farmer than a soldier. The exercises 
of war were with him practical, not poetical ; his poetry- 
was in domestic life only, and the object of battle, "pacis 
imponere morem.'^° And the arts are extinguished in his 
hands, and do not rise again, until, with Gothic chivalry, 5 
there comes back into the mind of Europe a passionate 
delight in war itself, for the sake of war. And then, with 
the romantic knighthood which can imagine no other 
noble employment, — under the fighting kings of France, 
England, and Spain ; and under the fighting dukeships and 10 
citizenships of Italy, art is born again, and rises to her 
height in the great valleys of Lombardy° and Tuscany, 
through which there flows not a single stream, from all 
their Alps° or Apennines, ° that did not once run dark red 
from battle : and it reaches its culminating glory in the 15 
city which gave to history the most intense type of soldier- 
ship yet seen among men ; — the city whose armies were 
led in their assault by their king, led through it to victory 
by their king,^ and so led, though that king of theirs was 
blind, and in the extremit}^ of his age. 20 

92. And from this time forward, as peace is established 
or extended in Europe, the arts decline. They reach an 
unparalleled pitch of costhness, but lose their life, enlist 
themselves at last on the side of luxury and various cor- 
ruption, and, among wholly tranquil nations, wither 25 
utterly away; remaining only in partial practice among 
races who, hke the French and us, have still the minds, 
though we cannot all live the lives, of soldiers. 

93. " It maybe so," I can suppose that a philanthropist^ 
might exclaim. *' Perish then the arts, if they can flourish 30 
only at such a cost. What worth is there in toys of canvas 

^ Henry Dandolo : the King of Bohemia is verj^ grand, too, and 
by the issue, liis knighthood is, to us, more memorable. 



80 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

and stone, if compared to the joy and peace of artless do- 
mestic life ? " And the answer is — truly, in themselves, 
none. But as expressions of the highest state of the hu- 
man spirit, their worth is infinite. As results they may be 
5 worthless, but, as signs, they are above price. For it is 
an assured truth that, whenever the faculties of men are 
at their fulness, they must express themselves by art ; and 
to say that a state is without such expression, is to say that 
it is sunk from its proper level of manly nature. So that, 
lo when I tell you that war is the foundation of all the arts, I 
mean also that it is the foundation of all the high virtues 
and faculties of men. 

94. It is very strange to me to discover this ; and very 
dreadful — but I saw it to be quite an undeniable fact. 

1 5 The common notion that peace and the virtues of civil 
life flourished together, I found to be wholly untenable. 
Peace and the vices of civil life only flourish together. We 
talk of peace and learning, and of peace and plenty, and of 
peace and civihzation ; but I found that those were not the 

2o w^ords which the Muse of History ° coupled together : that 
on her lips, the words were — peace and sensuality, peace 
and selfishness, peace and corruption, peace and death. 
I found, in brief, that all great nations learned their truth 
of word, and strength of thought, in war ; that they were 

25 nourished in war, and wasted by peace; taught by war, 
and deceived by peace ; trained by war, and betrayed by 
peace ; — in a word, that they were born in war and ex- 
pired in peace. ° 

95. Yet now note carefully, in the second place, it is 
30 not all war of which this can be said — nor all dragon's 

teeth, which, sown, will start up into men.° It is not the. 
ravage of a barbarian wolf-flock, as under Genseric or 
Suwarrow°; nor the habitual restlessness and rapine of 



WAR 81 

mountaineers, as on the old borders of Scotland®; nor 
the occasional struggle of a strong peaceful nation for its 
life, as in the wars of the Swiss with Austria®; nor the 
contest of merely ambitious nations for extent of power, 
as in the wars of France under Napoleon,® or the just 5 
terminated war in America.® None of these forms of war 
build anything but tombs. But the creative or founda- 
tional war is that in which the natural restlessness and love 
of contest among men are disciplined, by consent, into 
modes of beautiful — though it may be fatal — play : in 10 
which the natural ambition and love of power of men are 
disciplined into the aggressive conquest of surrounding 
evil : and in which the natural instincts of self-defence 
are sanctified by the nobleness of the institutions, and 
purity of the households, which they are appointed to 15 
defend. To such war as this all men are born ; in such war 
as this any man may happily die ; and out of® such war as 
this have arisen throughout the extent of past ages, all the 
highest sanctities and virtues of humanity. 

I shall therefore divide the war of which I would speak 20 
to you into three heads. War for exercise or play; war 
for dominion ; and, war for defence. 

96. I. And first, of war for exercise or play. I speak 
of it primarily, in this light, because, through all past 
history, manly war has been more an exercise than any- 25 
thing else, among the classes who cause, and proclaim it. 
It is not a game to the conscript, or the pressed sailor®; 
but neither of these are the causers of it. To the gov- 
ernor who determines that war shall be, and to the youths 
who voluntarily adopt it as their profession, it has always 30 
been a grand pastime; and chiefly pursued because they 
had nothing else to do. And this is true without any ex- 
ception. No king whose mind was fully occupied with the 



82 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

development of the inner resources of his kingdom, or with 
any other sufficing subject of thought, ever entered into 
war but on compulsion. No youth who was earnestly 
busy with any peaceful subject of study, or set on any 
5 serviceable course of action, ever voluntarily became a 
soldier. Occupy him early and wisely, in agriculture or 
business, in science or in literature, and he will never 
think of war otherwise than as a calamity.^ But leave 
him idle ; and, the more brave and active and capable he is 

lo by nature, the more he will thirst for some appointed 
field for action ; and find, in the passion and peril of battle, 
the only satisfying fulfilment of his unoccupied being. 
And from the earliest incipient civilization until now, the 
population of the earth divides itself, when you look at it 

15 widely, into two races ; one of workers, and the other of 
plaj'^ers — one tilling the ground, manufacturing, building, 
and otherwise providing for the necessities of life ; — the 
other part proudly idle, and continually therefore needing 
recreation, in which they use the productive and laborious 

20 orders° partly as their cattle, and partly as their puppets 
or pieces in the game of death. ° 

97. ^Now, remember, whatever virtue or goodliness 
there may be in this game of war, rightly played, there is 
none when you thus play it with a multitude of human 

25 pawns.° 

If you, the gentlemen of this or any other kingdom. 



^ A wholesome calamity, observe, not to be shrunk from, though 
not to be provoked. 

2 I dislike more and more every day the declamatory forms in 
which what I most desired to make impressive was arranged for 
oral delivery, but these two paragraphs, 97 and 98, sacrifice no 
accuracy in their endeavor to be pompous, and are among the 
most importantly true passages I have ever written. 



WAR 83 

choose to make your pastime of contest, do so, and wel- 
come ; but set not up these unhappy peasant-pieces upon 
the checker of forest and field. ° If the wager is to be of 
death, lay it on your own heads, not theirs. A goodly 
struggle in the Olympic dust,° though it be the dust of the 5 
grave, the gods will look upon, and be with you in° ; but 
they will not be with you, if you sit on the sides of the 
amphitheatre, ° whose steps are the mountains of earth, 
whose arena ° its valleys, to urge your peasant ° millions 
into gladiatorial" war. You also, you tender and delicate 10 
women, for whom, and by whose command, all true battle 
has been, and must ever be ; you would perhaps shrink 
now, though you need not, from the thought of sitting as 
queens above set lists where the jousting° game might be 
mortal. How much more, then, ought you to shrink 15 
from the thought of sitting above a theatre pit in which 
even a few condemned slaves were slaying each other only 
for your delight ! And do you not shrink from the fact 
of sitting above a theatre pit, where, — not condemned 
slaves, — but the best and bravest of the poor sons of 20 
your people, slay each other, — not man to man, — as the 
coupled gladiators ; but race to race, in duel of genera- 
tions? You would tell me, perhaps, that you do not sit 
to see this ; and it is indeed true, that the women of Europe 
— those who have no heart-interest of their own at peril in 25 
the contest — draw the curtains of their boxes, and muffle 
the openings ; so that from the pit of the circus of slaughter 
there may reach them only at intervals a half -heard cry 
and a murmur as of the wind's sighing, when myriads of 
souls expire. The}^ shut out the death-cries; and are 30 
happy, and talk wittily among themselves. That is the 
utter literal fact of what our ladies do in their pleasant 
lives. 



84 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

98. Nay, you might answer, speaking with them° 
— "We do not let these wars come to pass for our play, 
nor by our carelessness ; we cannot help them. How can 
any final quarrel of nations be settled otherwise than by 

5 war?" 

I cannot now delay to tell you how political quarrels 
might be otherwise settled. But grant that they cannot. 
Grant that no law of reason can be understood by nations ; 
no law of justice submitted to by them: and that, while 

lo questions of a few acres, and of petty cash, can be deter- 
mined by truth and ecjuity, the questions which are to 
issue in the perishing or saving of kingdoms can be deter- 
mined only by the truth of the sword, and the equity of 
the rifle. Grant this, and even then, judge if it will always 

15 be necessary for you to put your quarrel into the hearts 
of your poor, and sign your treaties with peasants' blood. 
You would be ashamed to do this in your own private 
position and power. Why should you not be ashamed 
also to do it in public place and power? If you quarrel 

20 with your neighbor, and the quarrel be indeterminable by 
law, and mortal, you and he do not send your footmen to 
Battersea° fields to fight it out ; nor do you set fire to his 
tenants' cottages, nor spoil their goods. You fight out 
your quarrel yourselves, and at your own danger, if at all. 

25 And you do not think it materially affects the arbitrament" 
that one of you has a larger household than the other ; so 
that, if the servants or tenants were brought into the field 
with their masters, the issue of the contest could not be 
doubtful? You either refuse the private duel, or you 

30 practise it under laws of honor, ° not of physical force ; that 
so it may be, in a manner, justly concluded. Now the 
just or unjust conclusion of the private feud is of little 
moment, while the just or unjust conclusion of the public 



WAR 85 

feud is of eternal moment : and yet, in this public quarrel, 
you take your servants' sons from their arms to fight for it, 
and your servants' food from their lips to support it ; and 
the black seals on the parchment of your treaties of peace 
are the deserted hearth and the fruitless field. 5 

99. There is a ghastly ludicrousness in this, as there is 
mostly in these wide and universal crimes. Hear the 
statement of the very fact of it in the most literal words of 
the greatest of our English thinkers ° : — 

"What, speaking in quite unofficial language, is the net 10 
purport and upshot of war? To my own knowledge, for 
example, there dwell and toil, in the British village of 
Dumdrudge, usually some five hundred souls. From 
these, by certain ' natural enemies ' of the French, there are 
successively selected, during the French war, say thirty is 
able-bodied men. Dumdrudge, at her own expense, has 
suckled and nursed them ; she has, not without difficulty 
and sorrow, fed them up to manhood, and even trained 
them to crafts, so that one can weave, another build, 
another hammer, and the weakest can stand under thirty 20 
stone avoirdupois. ° Nevertheless, amid much weeping 
and swearing, they are selected ; all dressed in red ; and 
shipped away, at the public charges, some two thousand 
miles, or say only to the south of Spain ; and fed there till 
wanted. 25 

"And now to that same spot in the south of Spain are 
thirty similar French artisans, from a French Dum- 
drudge, in like manner wending; till at length, after in- 
finite effort, the two parties come into actual juxtaposition ; 
and Thirty stands fronting Thirty, each with a gun in his 30 
hand. 

"Straightway the word 'Fire!' is given, and they blow 
the souls out of one another, and in place of sixty brisk 



80 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

useful craftsmen, the workl has sixty dead carcases, wliich 
it must bury, and anon shed tears for. Mad these men 
any quarrel? Busy as the devil is,° not the smallest! 
They lived far enough apart ; were the entirest strangers ; 

5 nay, in so wide a universe, there was even, unconsciously, 
by commerce, some mutual helpfulness between them. 
How then ? Simi)leton ! tlieir governors had fallen out ; 
and instead of sliooling one anoliier, had the cunning to 
make these poor blockheads shoot." (Sartor Resartus.°) 

lo 100. Positively, then, gentlemen, the game of battle 
must not, and shall not, ultimately be played this way. 
But should it be i)layed any way? Should it, if not by 
your servants, be practised by yourselves? I tliink, yes. 
Both history and human instinct seem alike to say, yes. 

15 All healthy men like fighting, and like the sense of danger; 
all bra\'c women like to hear of tluMr fighting, and of their 
facing danger. This is a fixed instinct in the fine race of 
t hem° ; and I cannot help fancying that fair fight is the 
best i)lay for them ; and that a tournament was a better 

20 game than a steeple-chase. ° The time may ]")erhaps come 
in France as well as here, for universal hurdle-races and 
cricketing^: but 1 do not think universal crickets will 
bring out the bci.t (lualities of the nobles of either country. 
I use, in such cjucstion, the test which I ha\e ado})ted, of 

25 the connection of war with other arts; and I reflect how, 
as a sculptor, I sliould feel, if T were asked to design a 
monument for a dead knight, in Westminster abbey, "^ with 
a carving of a bat at one end, and a ball at the other. It 
may be the remains in me only of savage Gothic prejudice; 

30 but I had rather carve it with a shield at one end, and a 
sword at the other. And this, observe, with no reference 
whatever to any story of duty done, or cause defended. 
Assume the knight merely to have ridden out occasionally 



WAR 87 

to fi^lit his noi<!;hl)()r for oxcM-ciso ; assumo him even a 
soUUer of fortuno, and to liavc gained liis bread, and filled 
his purse, at the sword's point. Still, I feel as if it were, 
soineliow, p;rand(M- and worthier in him to have made his 
bread by swoid play liian any other play ; 1 had rather he 5 
had made it by thrusting than by batting ; — nmcli rather, 
than by betting. Much rather that he should ride wiir 
horses, than back race horses ; and — I say it. sternly and 
deliberately — much rather would I have him slay his 
neighbor, than cheat him.° 'o 

10 1 . But remember, so far as t his may be true, the game 
of war is only that in which the full personal power of the 
human creature is br/)ught out in management of its 
weapons. And this for tliree reasons: — 

I<'irst, the great justification of this game is that it truly, 15 
when well played, determines who is the best man; — who 
is the highest bred, the most self-denying, the most fear- 
less, the coolest, of nerve, the swiftest of eye and hand. 
You cannot test these qualities wholly, unless there is a 
clear possibility of the struggle's ending in death. It 20 
is only in the fronting of that condition that the full trial 
of the man, soul and body, comes out. You may go to 
your game of wickets, or of huidles, or of cards, and any 
knavery that is in you may stay unchallengcKl all the while. 
But if the i)lay may be ended at any moment by a lance- 25 
thrust, a man will probably make up his accounts a little 
l)efore he enters it. Whatever is rotten and evil in him will 
weaken his hand more in holding a sword-hilt, than in 
balancing a billiard-cue; and on the whole, the habit of 
li\ing lightly heartxMl, in daily i)resence of death, always 30 
has had, and must have, power both in the making" and 
testing of honest men. But for the final testing, observe, 
you must make the issue of battle strictly dependent on 



88 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

fineness of frame, and firmness of hand. You must not 
make it the question, which of the combatants has the 
longest gun, or which has got° behind the biggest tree, or 
which has the wind in his face, or w^hich has gunpowder 
5 made by the best chemists, or iron smelted with the best 
coal, or the angriest mob at his back. Decide your battle, 
whether of nations, or individuals, on those terms ; — and 
you have only multipHed confusion, and added slaughter 
to iniquity. But decide your battle by pure trial which 

lo has the strongest arm, and steadiest heart, — and you 
have gone far to decide a great many matters besides, and 
to decide them rightly.^ 

102. And the other reasons for this mode of decision of 
cause, are the diminution both of the material destructive- 

15 ness, or cost, and of the physical distress of war. For 
you must not think that in speaking to you in this (as you 
may imagine), fantastic praise of battle, I have overlooked 
the conditions weighing against me. I pray all of you, 
who have not read, to read with the most earnest atten- 

2o tion, Mr. Helps's° two essays on War and Government, in 
the first volume of the last series of ''Friends in Council.'' 
Everything that can be urged against war is there simply, 
exhaustively, and most graphically stated. And all, there 
urged, is true. But the two great counts of evil alleged 

25 against war by that most thoughtful writer, hold only 
against modern war. If you have to take away masses of 
men from all industrial employment, — to feed them by 
the labor of others, — to provide them with destructive 
machines, ° varied daily in national rivalship of inventive 

30 cost ; if you have to ravage the country which you attack, 
— to destroy for a score of future 5^ears, its roads, its 
woods, its cities, and its harbors ; — and if, finally, having 
^ Compare Fors Clavigera, Letter XIV., p. 9. 



WAR 89 

brought masses of men, counted by hundreds of thousands, 
face to face, you tear those masses to pieces with jagged 
shot, and leave the hving creatures, ° countlessly beyond 
all help of surgery, to starve and parch, through days of 
torture, down into clots of clay — what book of accounts s 
shall record the cost of your work ; — what book of judg- 
ment sentence the guilt of it ? 

103. That, I say, is modern war, — scientific war, — 
chemical and mechanic war, — how much worse than the 
savage's poisoned arrow° ! And yet you w^ll tell me, per- lo 
haps, that any other war than this is impossible now. It 
may be so ; the progress of science cannot, perhaps, be 
otherwise registered than by new facilities of destruction ; 
and the brotherly love of our enlarging Christianity be only 
proved by multiphcation of murder. Yet hear, for a 15 
moment, what war was, in Pagan and ignorant days ; — 
what war might yet be, if we could extinguish our science 
in darkness, and join the heathen's practice to the Chris- 
tian's theory. I read you this from a book which probably 
most of you know well, and all ought to know — Miiller's 20 
"Dorians";* — but I have put the points I wish you to 
remember in closer connection than in his text. 

104. "The chief characteristic of the warriors of Sparta° 
was great composure and subdued strength ; the violence 
{\va(ra)° of Aristodemus° and Isadas° being considered 25 
as deserving rather of blame than praise ; and these quali- 
ties in general distinguished the Greeks from the northern 
Barbarians, ° whose boldness always consisted in noise and 
tumult. For the same reason the Spartans sacrificed to 
the Muses before an action; these goddesses being ex- 30 
pected to produce regularity and order in battle ; as they 
sacrificed on the same occasion in Crete° to the god of love, as 

1 Vol. ii., chap. 12, § 9. 



90 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

the confirmer of mutual esteem and shame. Every man 
put on a crown, when the band of flute-players gave the 
signal for attack ; all the shields of the line glittered with 
their high polish, and mingled their splendor with the dark 
5 red of the purple mantles, which were meant both to adorn 
the combatant, and to conceal the blood of the wounded ; 
to fall well and decorously being an incentive the more to 
the most heroic valor. The conduct of the Spartans in 
battle denotes a high and noble disposition, which rejected 

lo all the extremes of brutal rage. The pursuit of the enemy 
ceased when the victory was completed ; and after the 
signal for retreat had been given, all hostilities ceased. 
The spoiling of arms, at least diu'ing the battle, was also 
interdicted°; and the consecration of the spoils of slain 

15 enemies to the gods, as, in general, all rejoicings for victory, 
were considered as ill-omened. '' 

105. Such was the war of the greatest soldiers who 
prayed to heathen gods. What Christian war is, preached 
by Christian ministers, let any one tell you, who saw the 

20 sacred crowning, and heard the sacred flute-playing, and 
was inspired and sanctified by the divinely-measured and 
musical language, ° of any North American regiment pre- 
paring for its charge. And what is the relative cost of life 
in Pagan and Christian wars, let this one fact tell you : — 

25 the Spartans won the decisive battle of Corinth° with the 
loss of eight men ; the victors at indecisive Gettysburg° 
confess to the loss of 30,000. 

106. II. I pass now to our second order of war, the com- 
monest among men, that undertaken in desire of dominion. 

30 And let me ask you to think for a few moments what the 
real meaning of this desire of dominion is — first in the 
minds of kings — then in that of nations. 

Now, mind you this first, — that I speak either about 



WAR 91 

kings, or masses of men, with a fixed conviction that 
human nature is a noble and beautiful thing; not a foul 
nor a base thing. All the sin of men I esteem as their 
disease, not their nature; as a folly which may be pre- 
vented, not a necessity which must be accepted. And 5 
my wonder, even when things are at their worst, is always 
at the height which this human nature can attain. Think- 
ing it high, I find it always a higher thing than I thought 
it ; while those who think it low, find it, and will find it, 
always lower than they thought it : the fact being, that it 10 
is infinite, and capable of infinite height and infinite fall; 
but the nature of it — and here is the faith which I would 
have you hold with me — the nature of it is in the noble- 
ness, not in the catastrophe. 

107. Take the faith in its utmost terms. When the 15 
captain of the "London" shook hands with his mate, 
saying "God speed you! I will go down with my passen- 
gers," that I believe to be "human nature." He does not 
do it from any religious motive — from any hope of re- 
ward, or any fear of punishment ; he does it because he is 20 
a man. But when a mother, living among the fair fields 
of merry England, gives her two-year-old child to be 
suffocated under a mattress in her inner room, while the 
said mother waits and talks outside °; that I believe to be 
not human nature. You have the two extremes there, 25 
shortly. And you, men, and mothers, who are here face 
to face with me to-night, I call upon you to say which of 
these is human, and which inhuman — which "natural" 
and which "unnatural"? Choose your creed° at once, I 
beseech you : — choose it with unshaken choice — choose 30 
it forever. Will you take, for foundation of act and hope, 
the faith that this man was such as God made him, or that 
this woman was such as God made her ? Which of them 



92 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

has failed from their nature — from their present, possible, 
actual nature ; — not their nature of long ago, but their 
nature of now ? Which has betrayed it — falsified it ? 
Did the guardian who died in his trust, die inhumanly, 
5 and as a fool ; and did the murderess of her child fulfil 
the law of her being ? Choose, I say ; infinitude of choices 
hang upon this. You have had false prophets among 
you — for centuries you have had them — solemnly 
warned against them though you were; false prophets, 

lo who have told you that all men are nothing but fiends or 
wolves, half beast, half devil. Believe that, and indeed 
you may sink to that. But refuse that, and have faith 
that God "made you upright," though you have sought 
out many inventions"; so, you will strive daily to be- 

15 come more what your Maker meant and means you to be, 
and daily gives you also the power to be — and you will 
cling more and more to the nobleness and virtue that is 
in you, saying, ** My righteousness I hold fast, and will not 
let it go."° 

2o 108. I have put this to you as a choice, as if you might 
hold either of these creeds you liked best. But there is 
in reality no choice for you; the facts being quite easily 
ascertainable. You have no business to think about this 
matter, or to choose in it. The broad fact is, that a hu- 

25 man creature of the highest race, and most perfect as a 
human thing, is invariably both kind and true; and that 
as you lower the race, you get cruelty and falseness, as 
you get deformity : and this so steadily and assuredly, that 
the two great words which, in their first use, meant only 

30 perfection of race, have come, by consequence of the in- 
variable connection of virtue with the fine human nature, . 
both to signify benevolence of disposition. The word 
generous, and the word gentle, both, in their origin, 



WAR 93 

meant only "of pure race," but because charity and ten- 
derness are inseparable from this purity of blood, the 
words which once stood only for pride, now stand as 
synonyms for virtue. 

109. Now, this being the true power of our inherent s 
humanity, and seeing that all the aim of education should 
be to develop this ; — and seeing also what magnificent 
self-sacrifice the higher classes of men are capable of, 
for any cause that they understand or feel, — it is wholly 
inconceivable to me how well-educated princes, who ought lo 
to be of all gentlemen the gentlest, and of all nobles the 
most generous, and whose title of royalty means only their 
function of doing every man "right" — how these, I say, 
throughout history, should so rarely pronounce themselves 
on the side of the poor and of justice, but continually 15 
maintain themselves and their own interests by oppression 
of the poor, and by wresting of justice; and how this 
should be accepted as so natural, that the word loyalty, 
which means faithfulness to law, is used as if it were only 
the duty of a people to be loyal to their king, and not the 20 
duty of a king to be infinitely more loyal to his people. 
How comes it to pass that a captain will die with his pas- 
sengers, and lean over the gunwale to give the parting boat 
its course ; but that a king will not usually die with, much 
less for, his passengers, — thinks it rather incumbent on 25 
his passengers in any number, to die for him P 

110.° Think, I beseech you, of the wonder of this. 
The sea captain, not captain by divine right, but only 
by company's appointment ; — not a man of royal de- 
scent, but only a plebeian" who can steer ; — not with the 30 
eyes of the world upon him, but with feeble chance, de- 
pending on one poor boat, of his name being ever heard 
above the wash of the fatal waves ; — not with the cause 



94 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

of a nalimi ivsting on his act, but helpless to save so iiiiieh 
as a I'hild from among the lost crowd with whom he re- 
solves to be lost, — yet goes down quietly to his grave, 
rather than break his faith to these few emigrants. But 
5 your captain by divine right, ° — your captain with the 
hues"^ of a hundred shields of kings upon his breast, — 
your cai>tain whose every deed, brave or base, will be 
ilhnninated or branded forever before unescapable eyes of 
men. your captain whose every thought and act are 

lo bcntMii'cnt . or fatal, from sunrising to setting, blessing as 
the sunshine, or shadowing as the night, — this captain, 
as you tind him in history, for the most ]iart thinks only 
how he may tax his passengers, and sit at most ease in his 
state cabin ! 

15 111. For observe, if there hail been indeed in the hearts 
of the rulers of great multitudes of men any such concep- 
tion of work for the good of those under their connnand, as 
there is in the good and thoughtful masters of any small 
company of men, not only wars for the sake of mere in- 

20 crease of [>ower could never take place, but our idea of 
power itself would be entirely altered. Do you suppose that 
to think and act even for a million of men, to hear their 
complaints, watch their weaknesses, restrain their vices, 
make laws for them, lead them, day by day, to purer life, 

25 is not enough for one man's work? If any of us were ab- 
solute lord only of a district of a hundred miles square, 
and were resolved on doing our utmost for it : making it 
feed as large a niunber of people as possible : making every 
clod productive, and every rock defensive, and every 

30 human being happy ; should we not have enough on our 
hands, think you? 

112."^ But if the ruler has any other aim than this; 
if. careless of the result of his interference, he desire only 



WAR 95 

the authority to iritcrferfi; and, regardless of what is ill- 
done or well-done, cares only that it shall be done at his 
bidding; — if he would rather do two hundred miles' 
space of mischief, than one hundred miles' space of good, 
of course he will try to add to his territory ; and to add 5 
inimitably. But does he add to his power? Do you call 
it power in a child, if he is allowed to play with the wheels 
and bands of some vast engine, pleased with their murmur 
and whirl, till his unwise touch, wandering where it ought 
not, scatters beam and wheel into ruin? Yet what ma- 10 
chine is so vast, so incognizable, as the working of the mind 
of a nation ; what chikl's touch so wanton, as the word of a 
selfish king? And yet, how long have we allowed the his- 
torian to speak of the extent of the calamity a man causes, 
as a just ground for his pride ; and to extol him as the great- 15 
est prince, who is only the centre of the widest error. 
Follow out this thought by yourselves ; and you will find 
that all power, properly so called, is wise and benevolent. 
There may be capacity in a drifting fire-ship to destroy a 
fleet ; there may be venom enough in a dead body to infect 20 
a nation : — but which of you, the most ambitious, would 
desire a drifting kinghood, robed in consuming fire, or 
a poison-dipped sceptre whose touch was mortal ? There 
is no true potency, remember, but that of help ; nor true 
ambition, but ambition to save. 25 

113. And then, observe farther,^ this true power, the 
power of saving, depends neither on multitude of men, 
nor on extent of territory. We are continually assuming 
that nations become strong according to their numbers. 
They indeed become so, if those numbers can be made of 3° 
one mind ; but how are you sure you can stay them in one 
mind, and keep them from having north and south minds ? 
Grant them unanimous, how know you they will be unani- 



96 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

mous in right ? If they are unanimous in wrong, the more 
they are, essentially the weaker they are. Or, suppose 
that they can neither be of one mind, nor of two minds, 
but can only be of no mind? Suppose they are a mere 
5 helpless mob ; tottering into precipitant catastrophe, like 
a waggon-load of stones when the wheel comes off. Dan- 
gerous enough for their neighbors, certainly, but not "pow- 
erful." 

114. Neither does strength depend on extent of terri- 
lo tory, any more than upon number of population. Take 

up your maps when you go home this evening, — put the 
cluster of British Isles beside the mass of South America ; 
and then consider whether any race of men need care 
how much ground they stand upon. The strength is in 
IS the men,° and in their unity and virtue, not in their stand- 
ing room : a little group of wise hearts is better than a 
wilderness full of fools° ; and only that nation gains true 
territory, which gains itself. 

115. And now for the brief practical outcome of all this. 
2o Remember, no government is ultimately strong, but in 

proportion to its kindness and justice; and that a nation 
does not strengthen, by merely multiplying and diffusing 
itself. We have not strengthened as yet, by multiplying 
into America. ° Nay, even when it has not to encounter 

25 the separating conditions of emigration, a nation need not 
boast itself of multiplying on its own ground, if it multi- 
plies only as flies or locusts do, with the god of flies for its 
god. It multiplies its strength only by increasing as one 
great family, in perfect fellowship and brotherhood. 

30 And lastly, it does not strengthen itself by seizing domin- 
ion over races whom it cannot benefit. Austria° is not 
strengthened, but weakened, by her grasp of Lombardy ; 
and whatever apparent increase of majesty and of wealth 



WAR 97 

may have accrued to us from the possession of India, ° 
whether these prove to us ultimately power or weakness, 
depends wholly on the degree in which our influence on 
the native race shall be benevolent and exalting. 

116.° But, as it is at their own peril that any race ex- 5 
tends their dominion in mere desire of power, so it is at 
their own still greater peril that they refuse to undertake 
aggressive war, according to their force, whenever they are 
assured that their authority would be helpful and pro- 
tective. Nor need you listen to any sophistical objection 10 
of the impossibihty of knowing when a people's help is 
needed, or when not. Make your national conscience 
clean, and your national eyes will soon be clear. No man 
who is truly ready to take part in a noble quarrel will 
ever stand long in doubt by whom, or in what cause, his aid 15 
is needed. I hold it my duty to make no political state- 
ment of any special bearing in this presence ; but I tell you 
broadly and boldly, that, within these last ten years, we 
English have, as a knightly nation, lost our spurs: we 
have fought where we should not have fought, for gain ; 20 
and we have been passive where we should not have been 
passive, for fear. I tell you that the principle of non-in- 
tervention, as now preached among us, is as selfish and 
cruel as the worst frenzy of conquest, and differs from it 
only by being not only malignant, but dastardly. 25 

117.° I know, however, that my opinions on this sub- 
ject differ too widely from those ordinarily held, to be any 
farther intruded upon you ; and therefore I pass lastly to 
examine the conditions of the third kind of noble war ; — 
war waged simply for defence of the country in which we 30 
were born, and for the maintenance and execution of her 
laws, by whomsoever threatened or defied. It is to this 
duty that I suppose most men entering the army consider 



98 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

themselves in reality to be bound, and I want you now to 
reflect what the laws of mere defence are; and what the 
soldier's duty, as now understood, or supposed to be 
understood. You have solemnly devoted yourselves to be 

5 English soldiers, for the guardianship of England. I want 
you to feel what this vow of yours indeed means, or is 
gradually coming to mean. 

118. You take it upon you, first, while you are senti- 
mental schoolboys ; you go into your military convent, or 

lo barracks, just as a girl goes into her convent while she is a 
sentimental schoolgirl ; neither of you then know what 
you are about, though both the good soldiers and the good 
nuns make the best of it afterwards. You don't under- 
stand perhaps why I call you "'sentimental" schoolboys, 

15 when you go into the army? Because, on the whole, it is 
love of adventure, of excitement, of fine dress and of the 
pride of fame, all which are sentimental motives, which 
chiefly make a boy like going into the Guards better than 
into a counting-house. You fancy, perhaps, that there 

20 is a severe sense of duty mixed with these peacocky mo- 
tives ° ? And in the best of you, there is ; but do not think 
that it is principal. If you cared to do your duty to your 
country in a prosaic and unsentimental way, depend upon 
it, there is now truer duty to be done in raising harvests, 

25 than in burning them ; more in building houses, than in 
shelling them — more in winning money by your own 
work, wherewith to help men, than in taxing other people's 
work, for money wherewith to slay men; more duty 
finally, in honest and unselfish living than in honest and 

30 unselfish dying, though that seems to your boys' eyes the 
bravest. So far then, as for your own honor, and the 
honor of your families, you choose brave death in a red 
coat before brave life in a black one, you are sentimental ; 



WAR 99 

and now see what this passionate vow of yours comes to. 
For a httle while you ride, and you hunt tigers or savages, 
you shoot, and are shot ; you are happy, and proud, 
always, and honored and wept if you die; and you are 
satisfied with your life, and with the end of it ; be- 5 
lieving, on the whole, that good rather than harm of it 
comes to others, and much pleasure to you. 

119. But as the sense of duty enters into your forming 
minds, the vow takes another aspect. You find that you 
have put yourselves into the hand of your country as a 10 
weapon. You have vowed to strike, when she bids you, 
and to stay scabbarded° when she bids you ; all that you 
need answer for is, that you fail not in her grasp. And 
there is goodness in this, and greatness, if you can trust 
the hand and heart of the Britomart° who has braced you 15 
to her side, and are assured that when she leaves you 
sheathed in darkness, ° there is no need for your flash to the 
sun. But remember, good and noble as this state may be, 
it is a state of slavery. There are different kinds of slaves 
and different masters. Some slaves are scourged to their 20 
work by whips, others are scourged to it by restlessness 
or ambition. It does not matter what the whip is ; it is 
none the less a whip, because you have cut thongs for it 
out of your own souls: the fact, so far, of slavery, is in 
being driven to your work without thought, at another's 25 
bidding. Again, some slaves are bought with money, 
and others with praise. It matters not what the purchase- 
money is. The distinguishing sign of slavery is to have a 
price, and be bought for it. Again, it matters not what 
kind of work you are set on ; some slaves are set to forced 30 
diggings, others to forced marches; some dig furrows, 
others field-works, and others graves. Some press the 
juice of reeds, and some the juice of Amines, and some the 



100 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

blood of men. The fact of the captivity is the same what- 
ever work we are set upon, though the fruits of the toil 
may be different. 

120. But, remember, in thus vowing ourselves to be the 

5 slaves of any master, it ought to be some subject of fore- 
thought with us, what work he is likely to put us upon. 
You may think that the whole duty of a soldier is to be 
passive, that it is the country you have left behind who is 
to command, and you have only to obey. But are you 

lo sure that you have left all your country behind, or that 
the part of it you have so left is indeed the best part of it ? 
Suppose — and, remember, it is quite conceivable — that 
you yourselves are indeed the best part of England ; that 
you, who have become the slaves, ought to have been the 

15 masters; and that those who are the masters, ought to 
have been the slaves ! If it is a noble and whole-hearted 
England, whose bidding you are bound to do, it is well; 
but if you are yourselves the best of her heart, and the 
England you have left be but a half-hearted England, 

20 how say you of your obedience ? You were too proud to 
become shop-keepers : are you satisfied then to become the 
servants of shop-keepers ? You were too proud to become 
merchants or farmers yourselves: will you have mer- 
chants or farmers then for your field marshals? You 

25 had no gifts of special grace for Exeter Hall° : will you 
have some gifted person thereat for your commander-in- 
chief, to judge of your work, and reward it? You im- 
agine yourselves to be the army of England : how if you 
should find yourselves, at last, only the police of her manu- 

30 facturing towns, and the beadles of her little Bethels° ? 
121.° It is not so yet, nor will be so, I trust, forever; 
but what I want you to see, and to be assured of, is, that 
the ideal of soldiership is not mere passive obedience and 



WAR 101 

bravery ; that, so far from this, no country is in a healthy 
state which has separated, even in a small degree, her civil 
from her military power. All states of the world, however 
great, fall at once when they use mercenary armies ; and 
although it is a less instant form of error (because involving 5 
no national taint of cowardice), it is yet an error no less 
ultimately fatal — it is the error especially of modern 
times, of which we cannot yet know all the calamitous con- 
sequences — to take away the best blood and strength of 
the nation, all the soul-substance of it that is brave, and 10 
careless of reward, and scornful of pain, and faithful in 
trust ; and to cast that into steel, and make a mere sword 
of it; taking away its voice and will; but to keep the 
worst part of the nation — whatever is cowardly, ava- 
ricious, sensual, and faithless — and to give to this the 15 
voice, to this the authority, to this the chief privilege, 
where there is least capacity, of thought. 

122. The fulfilment of your vow for the defence of Eng- 
land will by no means consist in carrying out such a sys- 
tem. You are not true soldiers, if you only mean to stand 20 
at a shop door, to protect shop-boys who are cheating inside. 
A soldier's vow to his country is that he will die for the 
guardianship of her domestic virtue, of her righteous laws, 
and of her anyway challenged or endangered honor. A 
state without virtue, without laws, and without honor, he 25 
is bound not to defend ; nay, bound to redress by his own 
right hand that which he sees to be base in her. 

123. So sternly is this the law of Nature and life, that a 
nation once utterly corrupt can only° be redeemed by a 
military despotism — never by talking, nor by its free 3" 
effort. And the health of any state consists simply in 
this : that in it, those who are wisest shall also be strong- 
est; its rulers should be also its soldiers; or, rather, by 



102 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

force of intellect more than of sword, its soldiers also its 
rulers. Whatever the hold which the aristocracy of Eng- 
land° has on the heart of England, in that they are still 
always in front of her battles, this hold will not be enough, 
5 unless they are also in front of her thoughts. And truly 
her thoughts need good captain's leading now, if ever ! 
Do you know what, by this beautiful division of labor (her 
brave men fighting, and her cowards thinking), she has 
come at last to think ? Here is a bit of paper in my hand/ 

lo a good one too, and an honest one ; quite representative of 
the best common pubhc thought of England at this mo- 
ment ; and it is holding forth in one of its leaders upon our 
"'social welfare," — upon our "vivid life" — upon the 
"poHtical supremacy of Great Britain." And what do 

15 you think all these are owing to ? To what our English 
sires have done for us, and taught us, age after age ? No : 
not to that. To our honesty of heart, or coolness of head, 
or steadiness of will? No: not to these. To our think- 
ers, or our statesmen, or our poets, or our captains, or 

20 our martyrs, or the patient labor of our poor ? No : not 

^ I do not care to refer to the journal quoted, because the article 
was unworthy of its general tone, though in order to enable the 
audience to verify the quoted sentence, I left the number contain- 
ing it on the table, when I gave this lecture. ° But a saying of 
Baron Liebig's,° quoted at the head of a leader on the same subject 
in the Daily Telegraph of January 11, 18G6, summarily digests 
and presents the maximum folly of modern thought in this respect. 
"Civilization," says the Baron, "is the economy of power, and 
English power is coal." Not altogether so, my chemical friend. 
Civilization is the making of civil persons, which is a kind of dis- 
tillation of which alembics ° are incapable, and does not at all 
imply the turning of a small company of gentlemen into a large 
company of ironmongers. And English power (what little of it 
may be left) is by no means coal, but, indeed, of that which, 
"when the whole world turns to coal, then chiefly lives." 



WAR 103 

to these; or at least not to these in any chief measure. 
" Nay," says the journal, "more than any agency, it is the 
cheapness and abundance of our coal which have made us 
what we are." If it be so, then "ashes to ashes "° be our 
epitaph ! and the sooner the better. 5 

124. Gentlemen of England, ° if ever you would hav9 
your country breathe the pure breath of heaven again, 
and receive again a soul into her body, instead of rotting 
into a carcase, blown up in the belly with carbonic acid 
(and great that way), you must think, and feel, for your lo 
England, as well as fight for her : you must teach her that 
all the true greatness she ever had, or ever can have, she 
won while her fields were green and her faces ruddy °; 
— that greatness is still possible for Englishmen, even 
though the ground be not hollow under their feet, nor the 15 
sky black over their heads. ° 

125. And bear with me, you soldier youths, ° who are 
thus in all ways the hope of your country ; or must be, 
if she have any hope : if I urge you with rude earnestness 
to remember that your fitness for all future trust depends 20 
upon what you are now.° No good soldier in his old age 
was ever careless or indolent in his youth. Many a giddy 
and thoughtless boy has become a good bishop, or a good 
lawyer, or a good merchant ; but no such an one ever 
became a good general. I challenge you, in all history, to 25 
find a record of a good soldier who was not grave and 
earnest in his youth. And, in general, I have no patience 
with people who talk about " the thoughtlessness of youth " 
indulgently. I had infinitely rather hear of thoughtless 
old age, and the indulgence due to that. When a man has 30 
done his work, and nothing can any way be materially 
altered in his fate, let him forget his toil, and jest with his 
fate, if he will ; but what excuse can you find for wilfulness 



104 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

of thought, at the very time when every crisis of future 
fortune hangs on your decisions ? A youth thoughtless ! 
when all the happiness of his home forever depends on the 
chances, or the passions, of an hour ! A youth though t- 
5 less ! when the career of all his days depends on the oppor- 
tunity of a moment ! A youth thoughtless ! when his 
every act is as a torch to the laid train of future conduct, ° 
and every imagination a fountain of life or death ! Be 
thoughtless in any after years, rather than now — though, 

lo indeed, there is only one place where a man may be nobly 
thoughtless, — his deathbed. No thinking should ever be 
left to be done there ° 

126.° Having, then, resolved that you will not waste 
recklessly, but earnestly use, these early days of yours, 

15 remember that all the duties of her children to England 
may be summed in two words — industry, and honor. I 
say first, industry, for it is in this that soldier youth are 
especially tempted to fail. Yet, surely, there is no reason, 
because your life may possibly or probably be shorter than 

20 other men's, that you should therefore waste more reck- 
lessly the portion of it that is granted you ; neither do the 
duties of your profession, which require you to keep your 
bodies strong, in any wise involve the keeping of your 
minds weak. So far from that, the experience, the hard- 

25 ship, and the activity of a soldier's life render his powers 
of thought more accurate than those of other men; and 
while, for others, all knowledge is often little more than a 
means of amusement, there is no form of science which a 
soldier may not at some time or other find bearing on busi- 

30 ness of life and death. A young mathematician may be 
excused for languor in studying curves to be described 
only with a pencil ; but not in tracing those which are to 
be described with a rocket. Your knowledge of a whole- 



WAR 105 

some herb may involve the feeding of an army; and 
acquaintance with an obscure point of geography, the suc- 
cess of a campaign. Never waste an instant's time, there- 
fore ; the sin of idleness is a thousand-fold greater in you 
than in other youths ; for the fates of those who will one 5 
day be under your command hang upon your knowledge ; 
lost moments now will be lost lives then, and every in- 
stant which you carelessly take for play, you buy with 
blood. 

127. But there is one way of wasting time, of all the 10 
vilest, because it wastes, not time only, but the interest 
and energy of your minds. Of all the ungentlemanly 
habits into which you can fall, the vilest is betting, or in- 
teresting yourselves in the issues of betting. It unites 
nearly every condition of folly and vice; you concentrate 15 
your interest upon a matter of chance, instead of upon a 
subject of true knowledge ; and you back opinions which 
you have no grounds for forming, merely because they are 
your own. All the insolence of egotism is in this ; and so 
far as the love of excitement is complicated with the 20 
hope of winning money, you turn yourselves into the 
basest sort of tradesmen — those who live by speculation. 
Were there no other ground for industry, this would be a 
sufficient one ; that it protected you from the temptation 
to so scandalous a vice. Work faithfully, and you will 25 
put yourselves in possession of a glorious and enlarging 
happiness ; not such as can be won by the speed of a horse, 
or marred by the obliquity of a ball. 

128. First, then, by industry you must fulfil your vow 
to your country; but all industry and earnestness will be 30 
useless unless they are consecrated by your resolution to 
be in all things men of honor ; not honor in the common 
sense only, but in the highest. Rest on the force of the 



106 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

two main words in the great verse, integer vitse, scelerisque 
purus° You have vowed your Ufe to England; give it 
her wholly — a bright, stainless, perfect life — a knightly 
life.° Because you have to fight with machines instead 
5 of lances, there may be a necessity for more ghastly 
' danger, but there is none for less worthiness of character, 
than in olden time. You may be true knights yet, though 
perhaps not equites, you may have to call yourselves 
"cannonry" instead of ''chivalry, "° but that is no reason 

lo why you should not call yourselves true men. So the 
first thing you have to see to in becoming soldiers is that 
you make yourselves wholly true. Courage is a mere 
matter of course among any ordinarily well-born youths ; 
but neither truth nor gentleness is matter of course. You 

15 must bind them like shields about your necks; you must 
write them on the tables of your hearts. ° Though it be 
not exacted of you, yet exact it of yourselves, this vow of 
stainless truth. ° Your hearts are, if you leave them un- 
stirred, as tombs in which a god lies buried. Vow your- 

20 selves crusaders to redeem that sacred sepulchre. And 
remember, before all things — for no other memory w^ill 
be so protective of you — that the highest law of this 
knightly truth is that under which it is vowed to women. 
Whomsoever else you deceive, whomsoever you injure, 

25 whomsoever you leave unaided, you must not deceive, 
nor injure, nor leave unaided, according to your power, 
any woman of whatever rank. Believe me, every virtue 
of the higher phases of manly character begins in this ; — 
in truth and modesty before the face of all maidens ; in 

30 truth and pity, or truth and reverence, to all womanhood. 

129.° And now let me turn for a moment to you, — 

wives and maidens, who are the souls of soldiers ; to you, 

— mothers, who have devoted your children to the great 



WAR 107 

hierarchy of war. Let me ask you to consider what part 
you have to take for the aid of those who love you ; for if 
you fail in your part they cannot fulfil theirs ; such abso- 
lute helpmates you are that no man can stand without 
that help, nor labor in his own strength. 5 

I know your hearts, and that the truth of them never 
fails when an hour of trial comes which you recognize for 
such. But you know not when the hour of trial first finds 
you, nor when it verily finds you. You imagine that you 
are only called upon to wait and to suffer ; to surrender lo 
and to mourn. You know that you must not weaken the 
hearts of your husbands and lovers, even by the one fear of 
which those' hearts are capable, — the fear of parting from 
you, or of causing you grief. Through weary years of 
separation ; through fearful expectancies of unknown fate ; 15 
through the tenfold bitterness of the sorrow which might 
so easily have been joy, and the tenfold yearning for 
glorious life struck down in its prime — through all these 
agonies you fail not, and never will fail. But your trial 
is not in these. To be heroic in danger is little ; — you 20 
are Englishwomen. To be heroic in change and sway of 
fortune is little ; — for do you not love ? To be patient 
through the great chasm and pause of loss is little ; — 
for do you not still love in heaven? But to be heroic in 
happiness ; to bear yourselves gravely and righteously in 25 
the dazzling of the sunshine of morning ; not to forget the 
God in whom you trust, when He gives you most ; not to 
fail those who trust you, when they seem to need you 
least ; this is the difficult fortitude. It is not in the pining 
of absence, not in the peril of battle, not in the wasting of 30 
sickness, that your prayer should be most passionate, or your 
guardianship most tender. Pray, mothers and maidens, 
for your young soldiers in the bloom of their pride; 



108 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

pray for them, while the only dangers round them are in 
their own wayward wills ; watch you, and pray, when they 
have to face, not death, but temptation. ° But it is this 
fortitude also for which there is the crow^ning reward. 
5 Believe me, the whole course and character of your lovers' 
lives is in your hands ; what you would have them be, 
they shall be, if you not only desire to have them so, but 
deserve to have them so ; for they are but mirrors in which 
you will see yourselves imaged. If you are frivolous, they 

lo will be so also ; if you have no understanding of the scope 
of their duty, they also will forget it ; they will listen, — 
they can listen, — to no other interpretation of it than 
that uttered from your lips. Bid them be brave ; — they 
will be brave for you; bid them be cowards; and how 

15 noble soever they be; — they will quail for you. Bid 
them be wise, and they will be wise for you ; mock at their 
counsel, they will be fools for you : such and so absolute 
is your rule over them. You fancy, perhaps, as you have 
been told so often, that a wife's rule should only be over 

20 her husband's house, not over his mind. Ah, no! the 
true rule is just the reverse of that; a true wife, in her 
husband's house, is his servant ; it is in his heart that she 
is queen. Whatever of best° he can conceive, it is her part 
to be ; whatever of highest he can hope, it is hers to prom- 

25 ise ; all that is dark in him she must purge into purity ; all 
that is failing in him she must strengthen into truth : from 
her, through all the world's clamor, he must win his praise ; 
in her, through all the world's warfare, he must find his 
peace. 

30 130. And, now, but one word more. You may wonder, 
perhaps, that I have spoken all this night in praise of war. 
Yet, truly, if it might be, I, for one, would fain join in the 
cadence of hammer-strokes that should beat swords into 



WAS 109 

ploughshares® : and that this cannot be, is not the fault of 
us men. It is your fault. Wholly yours. Only by your 
command, or by your permission, can any contest take 
place among us. And the real, final, reason for all the 
poverty, misery, and rage of battle, throughout Europe, s 
is simply that you women, however good, however reli- 
gious, however self-sacrificing for those whom you love, 
are too selfish and too thoughtless to take pains for any 
creature out of your own immediate circles. You fancy 
that you are sorry for the pain of others. Now I just tell lo 
you this, that if the usual course of war, instead of unroof- 
ing peasants' houses, and ravaging peasants' fields, merely 
broke the china upon your own drawing-room tables, no 
war in civilized countries w^ould last a week. I tell you 
more, that at whatever moment you chose to put a period 15 
to war,° you could do it with less trouble than you take 
any day to go out to dinner. You know, or at least you 
might know if you would think, that every battle you hear 
of has made many widows and orphans. We have, none of 
us, heart enough truly to mourn with these. But at least 20 
we might put on the outer symbols of mourning with 
them. Let but every Christian lady who has conscience 
toward God, vow that she will mourn, at least outwardly, 
for His killed creatures. Your praying is useless, and your 
churchgoing mere mockery of God, if you have not plain 25 
obedience ° in you enough for this. Let every lady in the 
upper classes of civilized Europe simply vow that, while 
any cruel war proceeds, she will wear black; — a mute's 
black, — with no jewel, no ornament, no excuse for, or 
evasion into prettiness. — I tell you again, no war would 30 
last a week. 

13L And lastly. You women of England are all now 
shrieking with one voice, — you and your clergymen 



110 THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

together, — because you hear of your Bibles being at- 
tacked. ° If you choose to obey your Bibles, you will 
never care who attacks them. It is just because you never 
fulfil a single downright precept of the Book, that you are 
5 so careful for its credit : and just because you don't care 
to obey its whole words, that you are so particular about 
the letters of them. The Bible tells you to dress plainly, ° 
— and you are mad for finery ; the Bible tells you to have 
pity on the poor,° — and you crush them under your 

lo carriage-wheels ; the Bible tells you to do judgment and 
justice, — and you do not know, nor care to know, so 
much as what the Bible word "justice" means. Do but 
learn so much of God's truth as that comes to ; know what 
He means when He tells you to be just: and teach your 

15 sons, that their bravery is but a fool's boast, and their 
deeds but a firebrand's tossing, unless they are indeed Just 
men, and Perfect in the Fear of God ; — and you will soon 
have no more war, unless it be indeed such as is willed by 
Him, of whom, though Prince of Peace, ° it is also written, 

20 "In Righteousness He doth judge, and make war."° 



THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

Preface 113 

The Queen of the Air : 

I. Athena in the Heavens 117 

II. Athena in the Earth 167 

III. Athena in the Heart 206 

The Hercules of Camarina .... 267 



112 



PREFACE 

i. My days and strength have lately been much broken ; 
and I never more felt the insufficiency of both than in 
preparing for the press the following desultory memoranda 
on a most noble subject. But I leave them now as they 
stand, for no time nor labor would be enough to complete 5 
them to my contentment ; and I believe that they contain 
suggestions which may be followed with safety, by per- 
sons who are beginning to take interest in the aspects of 
mythology, which only recent investigation has removed 
from the region of conjecture into that of rational inquiry. 10 
I have some advantage, also, from my field work, in the 
interpretation of myths relating to natural phenomena; 
and I have had always near me, since we were at college 
together, a sure, and unweariedly kind, guide, in my friend 
Charles Newton, ° to whom we owe the finding of more 15 
treasure in mines of marble than, were it rightly esti- 
mated, all California could buy. I must not, however, 
permit the chance of his name being in any wise associated 
with my errors. Much of my work has been done obsti- 
nately in my own way ; and he is never responsible for 20 
me, though he has often kept me right, or at least enabled 
me to adyance in a right direction. Absolutely right no 
one can be in such matters ; nor does a day pass without 
convincing every honest student of anticiuity of some par- 
tial error, and showing him better how to think, and where 25 
to look. But I knew that there was no hope of my being 
able to enter with advantage on the fields of history 
I 113 



114 PREFACE 

opened by the splendid investigation of recent philologists, 
though I could qualify myself, by attention and sympathy, 
to understand, here and there, a verse of Homer's or 
Hesiod's, as the simple people did for whom they sang. 

5 ii. Even while I correct these sheets for press, a lecture by 
Professor Tyndall° has been put into my hands, which I 
ought to have heard last 16th of January, but was hin- 
dered by mischance ; and which, I now find, completes, 
in two important particulars, the evidence of an instinctive 

lo truth in ancient symbolism ; showing, first, that the Greek 
conception of an setherial element pervading space is justi- 
fied by the closest reasoning of modern physicists ; . and, 
secondly, that the blue of the sky, hitherto thought to be 
caused by watery vapor, is, indeed, reflected from the 

15 divided air itself; so that the bright blue of the eyes of 
Athena, ° and the deep blue of her aegis, prove to be ac- 
curate mythic expressions of natural phenomena which it 
is an uttermost triumph of recent science to have revealed, 
iii. Indeed, it would be difficult to imagine triumph 

20 more complete. To form, "within an experimental tube, a 
bit of more perfect sky than the sky itself ! " here is magic 
of the finest sort ! singularly reversed from that of old time, 
which only asserted its competency to enclose in bottles 
elemental forces that were — not of the sky. 

25 iv. Let me, in thanking Professor Tyndall for the true 
wonder of this piece of work, ask his pardon, and that of all 
masters in physical science, for any words of mine, either 
in the following pages or elsewhere, that may ever seem to 
fail in the respect due to their great powers of thought, or 

30 in the admiration due to the far scope of their discovery. 
But I will be judged by themselves, if I have not bitter 
reason to ask them to teach us more than yet they have 
taught. • 



PREFACE 115 

V. This first day of May, 1869, 1 am writing where my 
work was begun thirty-five years ago, within sight of the 
snows of the higher Alps. In that half of the permitted 
life of man, I have seen strange evil brought upon every 
scene that I best loved, or tried to make beloved by others. 5 
The light which once flushed those pale summits with its 
rose at dawn, and purple at sunset, is now umbered and 
faint; the air which once inlaid the clefts of all their 
golden crags with azure is now defiled with languid coils 
of smoke, belched from worse than volcanic fires° ; their 10 
very glacier waves are ebbing, and their snows fading, as 
if Hell had breathed on them ; the waters that once sank 
at their feet into crystalline rest are now dimmed and foul, 
from deep to deep, and shore to shore. These are no care- 
less words — they are accurately, horribly, true. I know 15 
what the Swiss lakes were ; no pool of Alpine fountain at 
its source was clearer. This morning, on the Lake of 
Geneva, at half a mile from the beach, I could scarcely see 
my oar-blade a fathom deep. 

vi. The light, the air, the waters, all defiled ! How of the 20 
earth itself ? Take this one fact for type of honor done by 
the modern Swiss to the earth of his native land. There 
u.ed to be a Uttle rock at the end of the avenue by the port 
of Neuchatel°; there, the last marble of the foot of Jura,° 
sloping to the blue water, and (at this time of year) cov- 25 
cred with bright pink tufts of Saponaria.° I went, three 
days since, to gather a blossom at the place. The goodly 
native rock and its flowers were covered with the dust and 
refuse of the town ; but, in the middle of the avenue, was 
a newly constructed artificial rockery, with a fountain 30 
twisted through a spinning spout, and an inscription on 
one of its loose-tumbled stones, — 

" Aux Botanistes, 
Le club Juras<ique,"° 



116 PREFACE 

Ah, masters of modern science, give me back my Athena 
out of your vials, and seal, if it may be, once more, As- 
modeus° therein. You have divided the elements, and 
united them ; enslaved them upon the earth, and dis- 
5 cerned them in the stars. Teach us, now, but this of 
them, which is all that man need know, — that the Air is 
given to him for his life ; and the Rain to his thirst, and 
for his baptism ; and the Fire for warmth ; and the Sun 
for sight ; and the Earth for his meat — and his Rest. 

Vevay, May 1, 1869. 



r 



THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

I 

ATHENA CHALINITISi 

{Athena in the Heavens) 

LECTURE ON THE GREEK MYTHS OF STORM, GIVEN 

(partly) in university COLLEGE, 

LONDON, MARCH 9, 1869 

1. I WILL not ask your pardon for endeavoring to in- 
terest you in the subject of Greek Mythology^; but I 
must ask your permission to approach it in a temper differ- 
ing from that in which it is frequently treated. We can- 
not justly interpret the religion of any people, unless s 
we are prepared to admit that we ourselves, as well as 
they, are Hable to error in matters of faith ; and that 
the convictions of others, however singular, ma}'' in 
some points have been well founded, while our own, 
however reasonable, may in some particulars be mis- lo 
taken. You must forgive me, therefore, for not always 
distinctively calling the creeds of the past "superstition," 
and the creeds of the present day "religion"; as well as 
for assuming that a faith now confessed may sometimes 
be superficial, and that a faith long forgotten may once 15 
have been sincere. It is the task of the Divine to condemn 

1 "Athena the Restrainer." The name is given to her as hav- 
ing helped Bellerophon° to bridle Pegasus, ° the flying cloud. 

117 



us 77/ A' QrKKX OF TllK AIR 

tl\o on\>rs ot" aiuiquity, ami of tho [iliilologists to account 
for tluMu ; I will only pray you to road, with patioiu'o. and 
human sympathy, the thoughts o\ mon who li\od witlu>ut 
hlamo in a darkness thoy couKl not dis{>ol ; and to romom- 
5 bor that, whatever charge of folly may justly attach to t!io 
saying, "There is no Ciod.""' the folly is [M'ouder. tleeper, 
and less pardonable, in saying. " There is no Cxod but for 
me." 

■J. A myth, in its sim[>lest detinition. is a story with a 

lo meaning attached to it other than it seems to have at tii*st ; 
and the fact that it has such a meaning is generally marked 
by some of its circumstances being extraordinary, or. in 
the conunon use of the word, unnatural. Thus, if I toll 
you that Hercules killed a water-ser[>ent in the lake of 

15 Lerna.^"" and if 1 mean, and you understanil. nothing more 
than that fact, the siory. whether true ov false, is not a 
myth. But if by telling you this, I mean that Hercules 
puritied the stagnation of many streams from deadly 
miasmata.^' my story, however simple, is a true myth; 

20 only, as, if I left it in that simplicity, you would probably 
look for nothing beyond, it will be wise in me to surprise 
your attention by adding some singular circumstance; 
for instance, that the water-snake had several heads, 
which revived as fast as they were killcil. and which poi- 

.^5 soned even the foot that trod upon them as they slept. 
And in pro[HH-tion to the fulness of intended meaning I 
shall probably nuihiply and retinc u[Km these im{n'obabili- 
ties ; as. sup{>ose. if. instead of desiring only to tell you that 
Hercules puritied a marsh. 1 wished you to undei'stand 

30 that he contended with ihe venom and vapor of envy and 
evil ambition, whether in other men's souls or in his own, 
and choked that malaria only by supreme toil, — I might 
tell you that this serpent was formed by the goddess whose 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 119 

pride was in the trial of Hercules; and that its place of 
abode was by a palm-tree ; and that for every head of it 
that was cut off, two rose up with renewed life ; and that 
the hero found at last he could not kill the creature at all 
by cutting its heads off or crushing them, but only by 5 
burning them down ; and that the midmost of them could 
not be killed even that way, but had to be buried alive. 
Only in proportion as I mean more, I shall certainly ap- 
pear more absurd in my statement ; and at last, when 
I get unendurably significant, all practical persons will 10 
agree that I was talking mere nonsense from the begin- 
ning, and never meant anything at all. 

3. It is just possible, however, also, that the story- 
teller may all along have meant nothing but what he said ; 
and that, incredible as the events may appear, he himself 15 
literally believed — and expected you also to believe — 
all this about Hercules, without an}^ latent moral or his- 
tory whatever. And it is very necessary, in reading tradi- 
tions of this kind, to determine, first of all, whether you are 
listening to a simple person, who is relating what, at all 20 
events, he believes to be true (and may, therefore, possibly 
have been so to some extent), or to a reserved philosopher, 
who is veiling a theory of the universe under the grotesque 
of a fairy tale. It is, in general, more likely that the first 
supposition should be the right one : simple and credulous 25 
persons are, perhaps fortunately, more common than phi- 
losophers ; and it is of the highest importance that you 
should take their innocent testimony as it was meant, and 
not efface, under the graceful explanation which your 
cultivated ingenuity may suggest, either the evidence 30 
their story may contain (such as it is worth) of an ex- 
traordinary event having really taken place, or the unques- 
tionable light which it will cast upon the character of the 



120 THE QUEEN OF THE AIK 

person b}' whom it was frankly believed. And to deal 
with Greek religion honestly, you must at once understand 
that this hteral behef was, in the mind of the general 
people, as deeply rooted as ours in the legends of our own 

S sacred book ; and that a basis of unmiraculous event was 
as little suspected, and an explanatory symbohsm as 
rarely traced, by them, as by us. 

You must, therefore, observe that I deeply degrade the 
position which such a myth as that just referred to oc- 

lo cupied in the Greek mind, by comparing it (for fear of 
offending 3'ou) to our story of St. George and the Dragon. ° 
Still, the analogy is perfect in minor respects ; and though 
it fails to give you any notion of the vitally rehgious 
earnestness of the Greek faith, it will exactly illustrate 

IS the manner in which faith laid hold of its objects. 

4. This story of Hercules and the Hydra, ° then, w^as to 
the general Greek mind, in its best days, a tale about a 
real hero and a real monster. Not one in a thousand 
knew anything of the way in which the story had arisen, 

20 any more than the English peasant generally is aware of 
the plebeian original" of St. George; or supposes that 
there were once alive in the world, with sharp teeth and 
claws, real, and very ugly, flying dragons. On the other 
hand, few persons traced any moral or symbolical meaning 

as in the story, and the average Greek was as far from imagin- 
ing any interpretation like that I have just given you, as an 
average Englishman is from seeing in St. George the Red 
Cross Knight of Spenser, ° or in the Dragon the Spirit of 
Infidelit5\ But, for all that, there was a certain under- 

30 current of consciousness in all minds that the figures meant 
more than they at first showed ; and, according to each 
man's own faculties of sentiment, he judged and read them ; 
just as a Knight of the Garter° reads more in the jewel on 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 121 

his collar than the George and Dragon of a public-house° 
expresses to the host or to his customers. Thus, to the 
mean person° the myth always meant little ; to the noble 
person, much; and the greater their familiarity with it, 
the more contemptible it became to one, and the more 5 
sacred to the other; until vulgar commentators ex- 
plained it entirely away, while Virgil made it the crown- 
ing glory of his choral hymn to Hercules. ° 

" Around thee, powerless to infect thy soul, 
Rose, in his crested crowd, the Lerna worm." 10 

" Non te rationis egentem 
Lernseus turb& capitum circumstetit anguis." 

And although, in any special toil of the hero's life, the 
moral interpretation was rarely with definiteness attached 
to its event, yet in the whole course of the life, not only a 15 
symbolical meaning, but the warrant for the existence of a 
real spiritual power, was apprehended of all men. Hercu- 
les was no dead hero, to be remembered only as a victor 
over monsters of the past — harmless now, as slain. He 
was the perpetual type and mirror of heroism, and its 20 
present and living aid against every ravenous form of 
human trial and pain. 

5. But, if we seek to know more than this, and to 
ascertain the manner in which the story first crystallized 
into its shape, we shall find ourselves led back generally 25 
to one or other of two sources — either to actual historical 
events, represented by the fancy under figures personify- 
ing them ; or else to natural phenomena similarly endowed 
with life by the imaginative power, usually more or less 
under the influence of terror. The historical myths we 30 
must leave the masters of history to follow ; they, and the 



122 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

events they record, being yet involved in great, though 
attractive and penetrable, mystery. But the stars, 
and hills, and storms are with us now, as they were with 
others of old ; and it only needs that we look at them with 

5 the earnestness of those childish eyes to understand the 
first words spoken of them by the children of men. And 
then, in all the most beautiful and enduring myths, we 
shall find, not only a literal story of a real person, not only 
a parallel imagery of moral principle, but an underlying 

lo worship of natural phenomena, out of which both have 
sprung, and in which both forever remain rooted. Thus, 
from the real sun, rising and setting, — from the real at- 
mosphere, calm in its dominion of unfading blue, and 
fierce in its descent of tempest, — the Greek forms first 

15 the idea of two entirely personal and corporeal gods, 
whose limbs are clothed in divine flesh, and whose brows 
are crowned with divine beauty ; yet so real that the quiver 
rattles at their shoulder, and the chariot bends beneath 
their weight. And, on the other hand, collaterally with 

20 these corporeal images, and never for one instant separated 
from them, he conceives also two omnipresent spiritual 
influences, of which one illuminates, as the sun, with a 
constant fire, whatever in humanity is skilful and wise; 
and the other, like the living air, breathes the calm of 

25 heavenly fortitude, and strength of righteous anger, into 
every human breast that is pure and brave. 

6. Now, therefore, in nearly every myth of importance, 
and certainly in every one of those of which I shall speak 
to-night, you have to discern these three structural parts, 

30 — the root and the two branches : the root, in physical 
existence, sun, or sky, or cloud, or sea ; then the personal 
incarnation of that, becoming a trusted and companionable 
deity, with whom you may walk hand in hand, as a child 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 123 

with its brother or its sister ; and, lastly, the moral signifi- 
cance of the image, which is in all the great myths eternally 
and beneficently true. 

7. The great myths; that is to say, myths made by 
great people. For the first plain fact about myth-making 5 
i3 one which has been most strangely lost sight of, — that 
you cannot make a myth unless you have something to 
make it of. You cannot tell a secret which you don't° 
know. If the myth is about the sky, it must have been 
made by somebody who had looked at the sky. If the 10 
myth is about justice and fortitude, it must have been 
made by some one who knew what it was to be just or 
patient. According to the quantity of understanding in 
the person will be the quantity of significance in his fable ; 
and the myth of a simple and ignorant race must neces-15 
sarily mean little, because a simple and ignorant race have 
little to mean. So the great question in reading a story 

is always, not what wild hunter dreamed, or what childish 
race first dreaded it ; but what wise man first perfectly 
told, and what strong people first perfectly lived by it. 20 
And the real meaning of any myth is that which it has at 
the noblest age of the nation among whom it is current. 
The farther back you pierce, the less significance you will 
find, until you come to the first narrow thought, which, 
indeed, contains the germ of the accomphshed tradition ; 25 
but only as the seed contains the flower. As the intelli- 
gence and passion of the race develop, they cling to and 
nourish their beloved and sacred legend°; leaf by leaf it 
expands under the touch of more pure affections, and more 
delicate imagination, until at last the perfect fable bur- 30 
geons out° into symmetry of milky stem and honied 
bell.° 

8. But through w^hatever changes it may pass, remem- 



124 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

bcr that our right reading of it is wholly dependent on 
the materials we have in our own minds for an intelligent 
answering sympathy. If it first arose among a people 
who dwelt under stainless skies, and measured their jour- 
5 neys by ascending and declining stars, we certainly cannot 
read their story, if we have never seen anything above us 
in the day but smoke, nor anything around us in the 
night but candles. If the tale goes on to change clouds or 
planets into living creatures, — to invest them with fair 

lo forms and inflame them with mighty passions, — we can 
only understand the story of the human-hearted things, 
in so far as we ourselves take pleasure in the perfectness of 
visible form, or can sympathize, by an effort of imagina- 
tion, with the strange peoi)le who had other loves than 

15 that of wealth, and other interests than those of com- 
merce. And, lastly, if the myth complete itself to the 
fulfilled thoughts of the nation, by attributing to the gods, 
whom they have carved out of their fantasy, ° continual 
presence with their own souls ; and their every effort for 

20 good is finally guided by the sense of the companionship, 
the praise, and the pure will of immortals, we shall be able 
to follow them into this last circle of their faith only in the 
degree in which the better parts of our own beings have 
been also stirred by the aspects of nature, or strengthened 

25 by her laws. It may be easy to prove that the ascent of 
Apollo in his chariot signifies nothing but the rising of the 
sun. But what does the sunrise itself signify to us? If 
only languid return to frivolous anmsement, or fruitless 
labor, it will, indeed, not be easy for us to conceive the 

30 power, over a Greek, of the name of Apollo. But if, for 
us also, as for the Greek, the sunrise means daily restora- 
tion to the sense of passionate gladness and of perfect life 
— if it means the thrilling of new strength through every 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 125 

nerve, — the shedding over us of a better peace than the 
peace of night, in the power of the dawn, — and the 
purging of evil vision and fear by the baptism of its dew ; — 
if the sun itself is an influence, to us also, of spiritual good 
— and becomes thus in reality, not in imagination, to us 5 
also, a spiritual power, — we may then soon over-pass the 
narrow limit of conception which kept that power imper- 
sonal, and rise with the Greek to the thought of an angel 
who rejoiced as a strong man to run his course, whose 
voice calling to life and to labor rang round the earth, and 10 
whose going forth was to the ends of heaven. ° 

9. The time, then, at which I shall take up for you, as 
well as I can decipher it, the traditions of the gods of 
Greece, shall be near the beginning of its central and 
formed faith, — about 500 B.C., — a faith of which the 15 
character is perfectly represented by Pindar° and iEschylus,° 
who are both of them outspokenly religious, and entirely 
sincere men ; while we may always look back to find the 
less developed thought of the preceding epoch given by 
Homer, in a more occult, subtle, half-instinctive, and in- 20 
voluntary way. 

10. Now, at that culminating period of the Greek reli- 
gion, we find, under one governing Lord of all things, four 
subordinate elemental forces, and four spiritual powers 
living in them and commanding them. The elements are 25 
of course the well-known four of the ancient world, — the 
earth, the waters, the fire, and the air°; and the living 
powers of them are Demeter, the Latin Ceres° ; Poseidon, 
the Latin Neptune°; Apollo, who has retained always 
his Greek name ; and Athena, the Latin Minerva. Each 3a 
of these are descended from, or changed from, more an- 
cient, and therefore more mystic, deities of the earth and 
heaven, and of a finer element of aether supposed to be 



126 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

beyond the heavens ; ^ but at this time we find the four quite 
definite, both in their kingdoms and in their personahties. 
They are the rulers of the earth that we tread upon, and 
the air that we breathe; and are with us as closely, in 
5 their vivid humanity, as the dust that they animate, and 
the winds that they bridle. I shall briefly define for you 
the range of their separate dominions, and then follow, as 
far as we have time, the most interesting of the legends 
which relate to the (jueen of the air. 

lo 11. The rule of the first spirit, Demeter, the earth 
mother, is over the earth, first, as the origin of all life — 
the dust from whence we were taken ; secondly, as the 
receiver of all things back at last into silence — -"Dust 
thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return. "° And, there- 

15 fore, as the most tender image of this appearing and fad- 
ing life, in the birth and fall of flowers, her daughter Pros- 
erjMne plays in the fields of Sicily, and thence is torn away 
into darkness, and becomes the Queen of Fate° — not 
merely of death, but of the gloom which closes over and 

20 ends, not beauty only, but sin, and chiefly of sins the sin 
against the life she gave ; so that she is, in her highest 
power, Persephone, the avenger and purifier of blood — 
"The voice of thy brother's blood cries to me out of the 
ground."^ Then, side by side with this queen of the earth, 

25 we find a demigod of agriculture by the plough — the lord 
of grain, ° or of the thing ground by the mill. And it is a 
singular proof of the simplicity of Greek character at this 
noble time, that of all representations left to us of their 
deities by their art, few are so frequent, and none perhaps 

30 so beautiful, as the symbol of this spirit of agriculture. . 
12. Then the dominant spirit of the element water is 

^ And by modern science now also asserted, and with proba- 
bility argued, to exist. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 127 

Neptune, ° but subordinate to him are myriads of other 
water spirits, of whom Nereus° is the chief, with Pala)mon,° 
and Leucothea,° the "white lady " of the sea ; and Thetis,^ 
and nymphs innumerable who, like her, could "suffer a 
sea change,"° while the river deities had each indepen-5 
dent power, according to the preciousness of their streams 
to the cities fed by them, — the "fountain Arethuse, and 
thou, honored flood, smooth sliding Mincius, crowned with 
vocal reeds. ''° And, spiritually, this king of the waters 
is lord of the strength and daily flow of human life — he 10 
gives it material force and victory ; which is the meaning 
of the dedication of the hair, as the sign of the strength of 
life,° to the river or the native land. 

13. Demeter, then, over the earth, and its giving and 
receiving of life. Neptune over the waters, and the flow 15 
and force of life, — always among the Greeks typified by 
the horse, which was to them as a crested sea-wave, ani- 
mated and bridled. ° Then the third element, fire, has set 
over it two powers: over earthly fire, the assistant of 
human labor, is set Hephaestus, ° lord of all labor in which 20 
is the flush and the sweat of the brow ; and over heavenly 
fire, the source of day, is set Apollo, the spirit of all kin- 
dling, purifying, and illuminating intellectual wisdom, each 
of these gods having also their subordinate or associated 
powers, — servant, or sister, or companion muse. 25 

14. Then, lastly, we come to the myth which is to be our 
subject of closer inquiry, — the story of Athena and of the 
deities subordinate to her. This great goddess, the Neith 
of the Egyptians, the Athena or Athenaia of the Greeks, 
and, with broken power, half usurped by Mars,° the Mi- 30 
nerva of the Latins, is, physically, the queen of the air; 
having supreme power both over its blessing of calm, and 
wrath of storm ; and, spiritually, she is the queen of the 



128 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

breath of man,° first of the bodily breathing which is hfe 
to his blood, and strength to his arm in battle ; and then 
of the mental breathing, or inspiration, which is his moral 
health and habitual wisdom ; wisdom of conduct and of 
5 the heart, as opposed to the wisdom of imagination and 
the brain; moral, as distinct from intellectual; inspired, 
as distinct from illuminated. 

15. By a singular and fortunate, though I believe wholly 
accidental, coincidence, the heart-virtue, of which she is 

lo the spirit, was separated by the ancients into four divi- 
sions, which have since obtained acceptance from all men 
as rightly discerned, and have received, as if from the 
quarters of the four winds of which Athena is the natu- 
ral queen, the name of '' Cardinal" virtues: namely, Pru- 

15 dence (the right seeing, and foreseeing, of events through 
darkness) ; Justice (the righteous bestowal of favor and of 
indignation) ; Fortitude (patience under trial by pain) ; 
and Temperance (patience under trial by pleasure). 
With respect to these four virtues, the attributes of 

20 Athena are all distinct. In her prudence, or sight in 
darkness, sl)e is " Glaukopis, " '' owl-eyed." ^ In her justice, 
which is the dominant virtue, she wears two robes, one of 
light and one of darkness ; the robe of light, saffron color, 
or the color of the daybreak, falls to her feet, covering her 

25 wholly with favor and love, — the calm of the sky in bless- 
ing ; it is embroidered along its edge with her victory over 
the giants (the troublous powers of the earth), and the 
hkeness of it was woven yearly by the Athenian maidens 
and carried to the temple of their own Athena, not to the 

30 Parthenon, that was the temple of all the world's Athena, 
— but this they carried to the temple of their own only 

^ There are many other meanings in the epithet ; see, farther on, 
§ 91, pp. 229-231. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 129 

one who loved them, and stayed with them ahvays. Then 
her robe of indignation is worn on her breast and left arm 
only, fringed with fatal serpents, and fastened with 
Gorgonian cold,° turning men to stone; physically, the 
lightning and the hail of chastisement by storm. Then 5 
in her fortitude she wears the crested and unstooping 
helmet ; * and lastly, in her temperance, she is the queen of 
maidenhood — stainless as the air of heaven. ° 

16. But all these virtues mass themselves in the Greek 
mind into the two main ones, — of Justice, or noble pas- 10 
sion, and Fortitude, or noble patience ; and of these, the 
chief powers of Athena, the Greeks had divinely written 
for them, and for all men after them, two mighty songs, 
— one, of the Menis,^ Mens, passion, or zeal, of Athena, 
breathed into a mortal whose name is "Ache of heart," and 15 
whose short life is only the incarnate brooding and burst of 
storm ; and the other is of the foresight and fortitude of 
Athena, maintained by her in the heart of a mortal whose 
name is given to him from a longer grief, Odysseus, ° the 
full of sorrow, the much enduring, and the long-suffering. 20 

17. The minor expressions by the Greeks in word, in 
symbol, and in religious service, of this faith, are so many 
and so beautiful, that I hope some day to gather at least a 
few of them into a separate body of evidence respecting 
the power of Athena, and its relations to the ethical con- 25 
ception of the Homeric poems, ° or, rather, to their ethical 
nature; for they are not conceived didactically, but are 

^ I am compelled, for clearness' sake, to mark only one meaning 
at a time. Athena's helmet is sometimes a mask, sometimes a 
sign of anger, sometimes of the highest light of aether; but I can- 
not speak of all this at once. 

2 This first word of the Iliad, Menis, afterwards passes into the 
Latin Mens; is the root of the Latin name for Athena, "Minerva," 
and so of the English "mind." 

K 



130 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

iliilaclic in (lioir (^sscmico, as all good art is.° Tliore is an 
iiu'roasiii«>; iusoiisibilit y to this character, and even an open 
denial of it , among us now which is one of the most curious 
errors of modernism, — the peculiar and judii'ial blindness 
5 o{ an age which, having long practised art and poetry for 
the sake of pleasure only, has become incapable of reading 
their language when they were both didactic; and also, 
having Ixhmi itself accustomed to a professedly didactic 
teaching, which yet, for })rivate interests, studiously 

lo avoids collision with every prevalent vice of its day (and 
especially with avarice), has become enually dead to the 
intensely ethical conceptions of a, race which habitually 
divided all men into two broad classes of worthy or worth- 
less, — good, and good for nothing. And even the eele- 

15 bra ted passage of Horace about the Iliad is now misre;nl 
or disbelieved, as if it was impossible that the Iliad could 
be instruct i\e because it is not like a sermon. Horace does 
not say that it is like a sermon, and would have been still 
less likely to say so if he ever had had the advantage of 

20 hearing a sermon. "1 have been reaihng that story of 
Troy again" (thus he writes to a noble youth of Home 
whom he cared for), "(luietly at PraMieste, while you have 
been busy at Rome; and truly 1 think that what is base 
and what is noble, and what useful and useless, may be 

25 better learned from that, than from all Chrysippus'° and 
Crantor's° talk put together." ' Which is profoundly true, 
not of the Iliad only, but of all other great art whatsoever; 
for all pieces of such art are didactic in the purest way, 
indirectly and occultly, so that, first, you shall only be 

30 bet tered by them if you are already hard at work in better- 

* Note, oiu'c for all. thnt unless when there is iiuestiou abtnit 
some particular expression, 1 never translate literally, but give 
the real force of what is saiil, as 1 best can, freely. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 131 

ing yourself; and whon you are bottorod by Ihom, it shall 
b(! partly wiUi a general a(;(-(;ptari(;o of their influence, so 
constant and subtle that you shall be no more conscious of 
it than of th(; h(;althy digestion of food ; and partly by a 
^ift of unexpected truth, which you shall only find by slow 5 
ffiining for it, — which is withheld on purpose, and close- 
locked, that you may not get it till you have forged the 
k(!y of it in a furnace of your own heating. And this with- 
holding of their meaning is continual, and confessed, in 
the great poets. Thus Pindar says of himself: '""J'here is lo 
many an arrow in my fjuiver, full of si)eech to the wise, l>ut, 
for the many, they need interpreters." And neither Pin- 
dar, nor ^schylus, nor Hesiod,° nor Homer, nor any of 
the gr(;ater poets or t(;ac}iers of any nation or time, ever 
spoke but with intentional reservation ; nay, beyond this, 15 
then; is often a meaning which they themselves cannot 
int(!rpr(;t , — which it may be for ages long after them to 
int(!rprot, — in what they said, so far as it recorded true 
imaginative vision. For all the greatest myths have been 
seen by the men who tell them, involuntarily and passively, 20 
— seen by them with as great distinctness (and in some 
respects, though not in all, under conditions as far beyond 
th(; control of their will) as a dream sent to any of us by 
night when we dream clearest ; and it is this veracity of 
vision that could not be refusfid, and of moral that could 25 
not })e foreseen, which in modern historical inquiry has 
b(;(!n left wholly out of account; being indeed the thing 
whi(;h no merely historical investigator can understand, 
or even believe ; for it belongs exclusively to the creative or 
artistic group of men, and can only be interpreted by those 30 
of their race, who themselves in some measure also see 
visions and dream dreams. ° 

So that you may obtain a more truthful idea of the 



132 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

nature of Greek religion and legend from the poems of 
Keats, ° and the nearly as beautiful, and, in general grasp 
of subject, far more powerful, recent work of Morris, ° 
than from frigid scholarship, however extensive. Not 
5 that the poet's impressions or renderings of things are 
wholly true, but their truth is vital, not formal. They are 
like sketches from the life by Reynolds° or Gainsborough, ° 
which may be demonstrably inaccurate or imaginary in 
many traits, and indistinct in others, yet will be in the 

lo deepest sense like, and true ; while the work of historical 
analysis is too often weak with loss, through the very 
labor of its miniature touches, or useless in clumsy and 
vapid veracity of externals, and complacent security of 
having done all that is required for the portrait, when it 

15 has measured the breadth of the forehead and the length 
of the nose. 

18. The first of requirements, then, for the right reading 
of myths, is the understanding of the nature of all true 
vision by noble persons ; namely, that it is founded on con- 

20 stant laws common to all human nature ; that it perceives, 
however darkly, things which are for all ages true ; that we 
can only understand it so far as we have some perception 
of the same truth ; and that its fulness is developed and 
manifested more and more by the reverberation of it from 

25 minds of the same mirror-temper, in succeeding ages. You 
will understand Homer better by seeing his reflection in 
Dante, as you may trace new forms and softer colors in a 
hill-side, redoubled by a lake. 

I shall be able partly to show you, even to-night, how 

30 much, in the Homeric vision of Athena, has been made 
clearer by the advance of time, being thus essentially and 
eternally true; but I must in the outset indicate the re- 
lation to that central thought of the imagery of the in- 
ferior deities of storm. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 133 

19. And first I will take the myth of ^olus° (the '"'sage 
Hippotades " of Milton), ° as it is delivered pure by Homer 
from the early times. 

Why do you suppose Milton calls him ''sage"? One 
does not usually think of the winds as wry thoughtful or 5 
deliberate powers. But hear Homer° : "Then we came 
to the ^olian island, and there dwelt ^fColus Hippotades, 
dear to the deathless gods ; there he dwelt in a floating 
island, and round it was a wall of brass that could not be 
broken ; and the smooth rock of it ran up sheer. To 10 
whom twelve children were born in the sacred chambers, — 
six daughters and six strong sons ; and they dwell forever 
with their beloved father and their mother, strict in duty ; 
and with them are laid up a thousand benefits ; and the 
misty house around them rings with fluting all the day 15 
long.'' Now, you are to note first, in this description, the 
wall of brass and the sheer rock. You will find, through- 
out the fables of the tempest-group, that the brazen wall 
and precipice (occurring in another myth as the brazen 
tower of Danae) ° are always connected with the idea of the 20 
towering cloud lighted by the sun, here truly described as 
a floating island. Secondly, you hear that all treasures 
were laid up in them ; therefore, you know this ^Eolus is 
lord of the beneficent winds ("he bringeth the wind out of 
his treasuries"); and presently afterwards Homer calls 25 
him the "steward" of the winds, the master of the store- 
house of them. And this idea of gifts and preciousness in 
the winds of heaven is carried out in the well-known sequel 
of the fable : ^olus gives them to Ulysses, all but one, 
bound in leathern bags,° with a glittering cord of silver; 30 
and so like bags of treasure that the sailors think they 
are so, and open them to see. And when Ulysses is thus 
driven back to ^olus, and prays him again to help him, 



134 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

note tho delihoralo words of (ho kinp;'s refusal, — "Did I 
not," he says, "send thee on thy way heartily, that thou 
nii^htest reach thy country, thy home, and whatever is 
dear to thee ? It is not lawful for nie aji;ain to send forth 

5 favorably on his journey a man hated by the hai)py gods." 
This idea of the beneficence of .^^^olus remains to the latest 
times, though Virgil, by adopting the vulgar change of the 
cloud island into Lipari,° has lost it a little ; but even when 
i(^ is linally explained away by Diodorus," yi^]()lus is still a 

lo kind-hearted monarch, who lived on the coast of Sorrento, ° 
invented the use of sails, and established a system of storm 
signals. 

20. Another beneficent storm-power, Boreas, ° occupies 
an important place in early legend, and a singularly princi- 

15 pal one in art ; and I wish I could read to you a passage of 
Plato about the legend of Boreas and C)reithyia,° * and the 
breeze and shade of the Ilissus° — notwithstanding its 
severe reflection upon persons who waste their time on 
myt hological st udies ; but I must go on at once to the 

20 fable with wiiich you are all generally familiar, that of the 
Harpies. ° 

Tliis is always connected with that of Boreas or the north 
wind, because the (wo sons of Boreas are enemies of the 
IIarj)ies, and drive them away into frantic flight. The 

25 myth in its first literal form means only the battle between 
the fair north wind and the foul south one : the two Har- 
pies, "Stormswift " and "Swiftfoot," are the sisters of the 
rainbow; that is to*say, they are the broken drifts of 
the showery south wind, and the clear north wind drives 

30 them back ; but they (juickly take a deeper and more ma- 

* Translated by Max Mullor° iti tlio opening of his essay on 
"Comparative Mythology." — Chips from a Gcrmon ]Vorkshqp 
vol. ii. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 135 

lignant significance. You know the short, violent, spiral 
gusts that hft the dust before coming rain: tlie Har|)ies 
get identified first with these, and then with more violent 
whirlwinds, and so they are called " Ilarpicvs," " the Snalch- 
ers," and are thought of as entirely d(^s(ruc(ive ; (heir man- $ 
ncr of destroying being twofold, — by snatching away, 
and by defiling and polluting. This is a, mont h° in which 
you may really see a small Harpy at her work almost when- 
ever you choose. The first time that there is threatening 
of rain after two or three days of fine weat hci', leave your lo 
window well open to the street, and sonu^ books or papers 
on the table ; and if you do not, in a little while, know what 
the Harpies mean, and how they snatch, and how they 
defile, I'll give u|) my (Ireek myths. ° 

21. That is the physical meaning. It is now easy to 15 
find the mental one. You nmst all have felt the expression 
of ignoble anger in those fitful gusts of sudden storm. 
There is a sense; of provocation and apparent bit tcrness of 
purpose in th(Mr thin and senseless fury, wholly dilTerent 
from the nobler anger of the greater tempests. Also, they 20 
seem useless and unnatural, and tlu; (J reek thinks of 
them always as vile in malice, and opposed, therefore, to 
the Sons of Boreas, who are kindly winds, that fill sails, 
and wave harvests, — full of bracing health and happy im- 
pulses. From this lower and merely malicious temper, the 25 
Harpies rise into a greater terror, always associated with 
their whirling motion, which is indeed indicative of the 
most destructive winds; and they are thus related to the 
nol)ler tempests, as C'harybdis° to the sea ; they are de- 
vouring and desolating, merciless, making all things dis- 30 
appear that come in their grasp; and so, spiritually, they 
are the gusts of vexatious, fretful, lawless i)assion, vain 
and overshadowing, discontented and lamenting, meagre 



13G THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

and insane, — spirits of wasted energy, and wandering dis- 
ease, and unappeased famine, and unsatisfied hope. So you 
have, on the one side, the winds of prosperity and health, 
on the other, of ruin and sickness. Understand that, once, 
5 deeply, — any who have ever known the weariness of vain 
desires, the pitiful, unconquerable, coiling and recoiling 
and self-involved returns of some sickening famine and 
thirst of heart, — and you will know what was in the 
sound of the Harpy Celaeno's° shriek from her rock ; and 

lowhy, in the seventh circle of the " Inferno, "° the Harpies 
make their nests in the warped branches of the trees that 
are the souls of suicides. 

22. Now you must always be prepared to read Greek 
legends as you trace threads through figures on a silken 

1 5 damask : the same thread runs through the web, but it 
makes part of different figures. Joined with other colors 
you hardly recognize it, and in different lights it is dark or 
light. Thus the Greek fables blend and cross curiously in 
different directions, till they knit themselves into an ara- 

^o besque° where sometimes you cannot tell black from purple, 
nor blue from emerald — they being all the truer for this, 
because the truths of emotion they represent are inter- 
woven in the same way, but all the more difficult to read, 
and to explain in any order. Thus the Harpies, as they 

-'5 represent vain desire, are connected with the Sirens, ° 
who are the spirits of constant desire ; so that it is difficult 
sometimes in early art to know which are meant, both 
being represented alike as birds w4th women's heads ; only 
the Sirens are the great constant desires — the infinite 

30 sicknesses of heart — which, rightly placed, give life, and 
wrongly placed, waste it away; so that there are two 
groups of Sirens, one noble and saving, as the other is 
fatal. But there are no animating or saving Harpies; 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 137 

their nature is always vexing and full of weariness, and 
thus they are curiously connected with the whole group of 
legends about Tantalus. ° 

23. We all know what it is to be tantalized; but we 
do not often think of asking what Tantalus was tanta- 5 
lized for — what he had done, to be forever kept hungry 
in sight of food.° Well ; he had not been condemned to 
this merely for being a glutton. By Dante the same pun- 
ishment is assigned to simple gluttony, to purge it away ; 
but the sins of Tantalus were of a much wider and more 10 
mysterious kind. There are four great sins attributed to 
him : one, stealing the food of the gods to give it to men ; 
another, sacrificing his son to feed the gods themselves 
(it may remind you for a moment of what I was telling 
you of the earthly character of Demeter, that, while the 15 
other gods all refuse, she, dreaming about her lost daughter, 
eats part of the shoulder of Pelops° before she knows what 
she is doing) ; another sin is, telling the secrets of the gods ; 
and only the fourth — stealing the golden dog of Panda- 
reos° — is connected with gluttony. The special sense of 20 
this myth is marked by Pandareos receiving the happy 
privilege of never being troubled with indigestion; the 
dog, in general, however, mythically represents all utterly 
senseless and carnal desires ; mainly that of gluttony ; and 
in the mythic sense of Hades — that is to say, so far as it 25 
represents spiritual ruin in this life, and not a literal hell — 
the dog Cerberus° as its gate-keeper — with this special 
marking of his character of sensual passion, that he fawns on 
all those who descend, but rages against all who would re- 
turn (the Virgilian " facilis descensus "° being a later recog- 30 
nition of this mythic character of Hades) ; the last labor of 
Hercules is the dragging him up to the light ; and in some 
sort he represents the voracity or devouring of Hades 



138 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

itself; and the mediaeval representation of the mouth of 
hell perpetuates the same thought. Then, also, the power 
of evil passion is partly associated with the~red and scorch- 
ing light of Sirius, as opposed to the pure light of the sun : 
5 he is the dog-star of ruin° ; and hence the continual 
Homeric dwelling upon him, and comparison of the flame 
of anger to his swarthy light ; only, in his scorching, it i 3 
thirst, not hunger, over which he rules physically ; so that 
the fable of Icarius,° his first master, corresponds, among 

lo the Greeks, to the legend of the drunkenness of Noah.° 
The story of Actaeon," the raging death of Hecuba, ° 
and the tradition of the white dog which ate part of Her- 
cules' first sacrifice, and so gave name to the Cynosarges,° 
are all various phases of the same thought, — the Greek 

15 notion of the dog being throughout confused between its 
serviceable fidelity, its watchfulness, its foul voracity, 
shamelessness, and deadly miadness,° while with the curi- 
ous reversal or recoil of the meaning which attaches itself 
to nearly every great myth, — and which we shall pres- 

20 ently see notably exemplified in the relations of the ser- 
pent to Athena, — the dog becomes in philosophy a type 
of severity and abstinence. 

24. It would carry us too far aside were I to tell you the 
story of Pandareos' dog° — or rather of Jupiter's dog, for 

25 Pandareos was its guardian only ; all that bears on our 
present purpose is that the guardian of this golden dog 
had three daughters, one of whom was subject to the power 
of the Sirens, and is turned into the nightingale ; and the 
other two were subject to the power of the Harpies, and 

30 this was what happened to them : They were very beauti- 
ful, and they were beloved by the gods in their youth, and 
all the great goddesses were anxious to bring them up 
rightly. Of all types of young ladies' education, there is 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 139 

nothing so splendid as that of the younger daughters of 
Pandareos. They have hterally the four greatest god- 
desses for their governesses. Athena teaches them do- 
mestic accomiDhshments, how to weave, and sew, and the 
hke ; Artemis° teaches them to hold themselves up 5 
straight; Hera,° how to behave proudly and oppressively 
to company; and Aphrodite, ° delightful governess, feeds 
them with cakes and honey all day long. All goes well, 
until just the time when they are going to be brought out ; 
then there is a great dispute whom they are to marry, and 10 
in the midst of it they are carried off by the Harpies, given 
by them to be slaves to the Furies, ° and never seen more. 
But of course there is nothing in Greek myths ; and one 
never heard of such things as vain desires, and empty 
hopes, and clouded passions, defiling and snatching away 15 
the souls of maidens, in a London season. ° 

I have no time to trace for you any more harpy legends, 
though they are full of the most curious interest; but I 
may confirm for you my interpretation of this one, and 
prove its importance in the Greek mind, by noting that 20 
Polygnotus° painted these maidens, in his great religious 
series of paintings at Delphi, ° crowned with flowers, and 
playing at dice° ; and that Penelope° remembers them in 
her last fit of despair, just before the return of Ulysses, 
and prays bitterly that she may be snatched away at once 25 
into nothingness by the Harpies, like Pandareos' daugh- 
ters, rather than be tormented longer by her deferred hope, 
and anguish of disappointed love. 

25. I have hitherto spoken only of deities of the winds. 
We pass now to a far more important group, the deities of 30 
cloud. Both of these are subordinate to the ruling power 
of the air, as the demigods of the fountains and minor 
seas are to the great deep ; but, as the cloud-firmament 



140 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

detaches itself more from the air, and has a wider range of 
ministry than the minor streams and seas, the highest 
cloud deity, Hermes, ° has a rank more equal with Athena 
than Nereus or Proteus° with Neptune; and there is 

5 greater difficulty in tracing his character, because his 
physical dominion over the clouds can, of course, be as- 
serted only where clouds are; and, therefore, scarcely at 
all in Egypt ; ^ so that the changes which Hermes under- 
goes in becoming a Greek from an Egyptian and Phoenician 

lo god, are greater than in any other case of adopted tradi- 
tion. In Egypt Hermes is a deity of historical record, and 
a conductor of the dead to judgment; the Greeks take 
away much of this historical function, assigning it to the 
Muses ; but, in investing him with the physical power over 

15 clouds, they give him that which the Muses disdain, — 
the power of concealment and of theft. The snatching 
away by the Harpies is with brute force ; but the snatch- 
ing away by the clouds is connected with the thought of 
hiding, and of making things seem to be what they are not ; 

20 so that Hermes is the god of lying, as he is of mist ; and yet 
with this ignoble function of making things vanish and 
disappear is connected the remnant of his grand Egyptian 
authority of leading away souls in the cloud of death (the 
actual dimness of sight caused by mortal wounds physi- 

25 cally suggesting the darkness and descent of clouds, and 
continually being so described in the Iliad) ; while the 

* I believe that the conclusions of recent scholarship are gener- 
ally opposed to the Herodotean ideas of any direct acceptance by 
the Greeks of Egyptian myths; and very certainly, Greek art is 
30 developed by giving the veracity and simplicity of real life to 
Eastern savage grotesque;® and not by softening the severity of 
pure Egyptian design. But it is of no consequence whether one 
conception was, or was not, in this case, derived from the other; 
my object is only to mark the essential differences between them. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 141 

sense of the need of guidance on the untrodden road follows 
necessarily. You cannot but remember how this thought 
of cloud guidance, and cloud receiving of souls at death, 
has been elsewhere ratified. 

26. Without following that higher clue, I wull pass to 5 
the lovely group of myths connected with the birth of 
Hermes on the Greek mountains. You know that the 
valley of Sparta is one of the noblest mountain ravines in 
the w^orld, and that the western flank of it is formed by an 
unbroken chain of crags, forty miles long, rising, opposite 10 
Sparta, to a height of 8,000 feet, and known as the chain of 
Taygetus. Now, the nymph from whom that mountain 
ridge is named was the mother of Lacedaemon, therefore 
the mythic ancestress of the Spartan race. She is the 
nymph Taygeta,° and one of the seven stars of spring; 15 
one of those Pleiades° of whom is the question to Job, — 
"Canst thou bind the sweet influences of Pleiades, or loose 
the bands of Orion ? " ° " The sweet influences of Pleiades," 
of the stars of spring, — nowhere sweeter than among the 
pine-clad slopes of the hills of Sparta and Arcadia, ° when 20 
the snows of their higher summits, beneath the sunshine 
of April, fell into fountains, and rose into clouds ; and in 
every ravine was a newly awakened voice of waters, ° — 
soft increase of whisper among its sacred stones ; and on 
every crag its forming and fading veil of radiant cloud ; 25 
temple above temple, of the divine marble that no tool can 
pollute, nor ruin undermine. And, therefore, beyond this 
central valley, this great Greek vase of Arcadia, on the 
"hollow^' mountain, Cyllene, or "pregnant" mountain, 
called also " cold," because there the vapors rest,^ and born 30 

* On the altar of Hermes on its summit, as on that of the La- 
cinian Hera,° no wind ever stirred the ashes. By those altars, the 
Gods of Heaven were appeased, and all their storms at rest. 



142 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

of the eldest of those stars of spring, that Maia, from whom 
your own month of May has its name, bringing to you^ in 
the green of her garlands, and the white of her hawthorn, 
the unrecognized symbols of the pastures and the wreathed 
5 snows of Arcadia, where long ago she was^ queen* of stars : 
there, first cradled and wrapt in swaddling-clothes ; then 
raised, in a moment of surprise, into his wandering power, 
— is born the shepherd of the clouds, ° wing-footed and 
deceiving, — blinding the eyes of Argus, ° — escaping from 

lo the grasp of Apollo — restless messenger between the high- 
est sky and topmost earth — ''the herald Mercury, new 
lighted on a heaven-kissing hill." 

27.° Now, it will be wholly impossible, at present, to 
trace for you any of the minor Greek expressions of this 

15 thought, except only that Mercury, as the cloud shepherd, 
is especially called Eriophoros, the wool-bearer. You 
will recollect the name from the common woolly rush "eri- 
ophorum " which has a cloud of silky seed ; and note also 
that he wears distinctively the flat cap, petasos, named 

20 from a word meaning " to expand " ; which shaded 
from the sun, and is worn on journeys. You have the 
epithet of mountains ''cloud-capped" as an established 
form with every poet, and the Mont Pilate of Lucerne is 
named from a Latin word signifying specially a woollen 

25 cap ; but Mercury has, besides, a general Homeric epithet, 
curiously and intensely concentrated in meaning, *"the 
profitable or serviceable by wool,^ that is to say, by 
shepherd wealth; hence, " pecuniarily, "° rich, or service- 
able, and so he passes at last into a general mercantile 

30 * I am convinced that the ipi in ipi.oiJvios is not intensitive, but 
retained from epiov; but even if I am wrong in thinking this, the" 
mistake is of no consequence with respect to the general force of 
the term as meaning the profitableness of Hermes. Athena's 
epithet- pf dyeXela has a parallel significance. 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 143 

deity ; while yet the cloud sense of the wool is retained by 
Homer always, so that he gives him this epithet when it 
would otherwise have been quite meaningless (in Iliad, 
xxiv. 440), when he drives Priam 's° chariot, and breathes 
force into his horses, precisely as we shall find Athena drive 5 
Diomed° ; and yet the serviceable and profitable sense — 
and something also of gentle and soothing character in 
the mere wool-softness, as used for dress, and religious 
rites — is retained also in -the epithet, and thus the gentle 
and serviceable Hermes is opposed to the deceitful one. 10 

28. In connection with this driving of Priam's chariot, 
remember that as Autolycus° is the son of Hermes the 
Deceiver, Myrtilus° (the Auriga of the Stars) is the son of 
Hermes the Guide. The name Hermes itself means im- 
pulse ; and he is especially the shepherd of the flocks of 15 
the sky,° in driving, or guiding, or stealing them ; and yet 
his great name, Argeiphontes, not only — as in different 
passages of the olden poets — means ''Shining White," 
which is said of him as being himself the silver cloud 
lighted by the sun ; but " Argus-Killer," the killer of bright- 20 
ness, which is said of him as he veils the sky, and especially 
the stars, which are the eyes of Argus ; or, literally, eyes 
of brightness, which Juno, who is, with Jupiter, ° part of 
the type of highest heaven, keeps in her peacock's train. 
We know that this interpretation is right, from a passage 25 
in which Euripide.s° describes the shield of Hippomedon,° 
which bore for its sign, "Argus the all-seeing, covered with 
eyes ; open towards the rising of the stars, and closed tow- 
ards their setting.^' 

And thus Hermes becomes the spirit of the movement 30 
of the sky or firmament ; not merely the fast flying of 
the transitory cloud, but the great motion of the 
heavens and stars themselves. Thus, in his highest 



144 THE QUEEN' OF THE AIR 

power, he corresponds to the "primo mobile "° of the later 
Italian philosophy, and, in his simplest, is the guide of all 
mysterious and cloudy movement, and of all successful 
subtleties. Perhaps the prettiest minor recognition of his 
5 character is when, on the night foray ° of Ulysses and Dio- 
med, Ulysses wears the helmet stolen by Autolycus, the son 
of Hermes. 

29. The position in the Greek mind of Hermes as the lord 
of cloud is, however, more mystic and ideal than that of 

lo any other deity, just on account of the constant and real 
presence of the cloud itself under different forms, giving 
rise to all kinds of minor fables. The play of the Greek 
imagination in this direction is so wide and complex, that I 
cannot even give you an outhne of its range in my present 

15 limits. There is first a great series of storm-legends con- 
nected with the family of the historic ^olus, centralized 
by the story of Athamas,° with his two wives, "the Cloud " 
and the "White Goddess," ending in that of Phrixus° and 
Helle,° and of the golden fleece (which is only the cloud- 

20 burden of Hermes Eriophoros). With this, there is the 
fate of Salmoneus,° and the destruction of Glaucus° by 
his own horses ; all these minor myths of storm concentrat- 
ing themselves darkly into the legend of Bellerophon and 
the Chim8era,° in which there is an under story about the 

25 vain subduing of passion and treachery, and the end of life 
in fading melancholy, — which, I hope, not many of you 
could understand even were I to show it you (the merely 
physical meaning of the Chimaera is the cloud of volcanic 
lightning, connected wholly with earth-fire, but resembling 

30 the heavenly cloud in its height and its thunder) . Finally, 
in the -^olic group, there is the legend of Sisyphus, ° which 
I mean to work out thoroughly by itself; its root is in 
the position of Corinth as ruling the isthmus and the 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 145 

two seas — the Corinthean Acropolis, two thousand feet 
high, being the centre of the crossing currents of the winds, 
and of the commerce of Greece. Therefore, Athena, and 
the fountain-cloud Pegasus, are more closely connected 
with Corinth than even with Athens in their material, 5 
though not in their moral, power ; and Sisyphus founds the 
Isthmian games° in connection with a melancholy story 
about the sea gods ; but he himself is KcpSia-ros avhpoiv° 
the most "gaining" and subtle of men; who, having 
the key of the Isthmus, becomes the type of transit, 10 
transfer, or trade, as such ; and of the apparent gain from 
it, which is not gain ; and this is the real meaning of his 
punishment in hell — eternal toil and recoil (the modern 
idol of capital being, indeed, the stone of Sisyphus with a 
vengeance, crushing in its recoil). But, throughout, the 15 
old ideas of the cloud power and cloud feebleness, — the 
deceit of its hiding, — and the emptiness of its vanishing, 
— the Autolycus enchantment of making black seem 
white, — and the disappointed fury of Ixion° (taking 
shadow for power), mingle in the moral meaning of this 20 
and its collateral legends ; and give an aspect, at last, not 
only of foolish cunning, but of impiety or literal " idolatry," 
"imagination worship," to the dreams of avarice and in- 
justice, until this notion of atheism and insolent bhndness 
becomes principal; and the "Clouds" of Aristophanes,°25 
with the personified "just" and "unjust" sayings in the 
latter part of the play, foreshadow, almost feature by fea- 
ture, in all that they were written to mock and to chastise, 
the worst elements of the impious " Sivo? "° and tumult 
in men's thoughts, which have followed on their avarice in 30 
the present day, making them alike forsake the laws of 
their ancient gods, and misapprehend or reject the true 
words of their existing teachers. 



l\0. All ihis w (^ h;>\i^ ivom {\\c loi:;oiuls oi \\\c \\\s\or'\c 
*¥a\\\\!^ olUy ; but, l>t\sidt\s tl\ost\ [hero is ihr l>i\'ui(ilul 
story of Son\t^K\ [\\c nu>tl\or i>f Ivirrhus/' Sh»^ is \\\c c\o\u\ 
willi llio sirtM\ij;th t>t" ilu^ \ ino in its hosom. ronsiiiiuvl l\v tin* 
N li^lK wliu'h iiiauirtvs tlio fruit; [he nirhnii; .-iw.'iv oi [ho 
o\o\u\ \\\[o [he oUwr iwv M tho friujjt* of its ovlc;t\s InMiis; o\ 
i^iiisitolv ivudoivd In IMiular's opitluM for hcv, Simiio1;\ 
"wuli tho stn^tohovl vMit hnir" (,TmT«^»f>«iV'' Vhax [hcvc is 
tlio omiiv tnulition of tlio IX'in.Mivlos. ' ;inil of ilio tv>\vtM- <>f 
K^ nanju"^'^ niui gx^Ulon sl\o\vtM' ; (lie Inrtli v^f 1\msous ' ovMuuH't 
it\^ij this U\j»viul with that iM tho v'ioi>;ons'' aiul lirnijv/" n\1u> 
im> tho truo oKnuis of tlwiuvlorinis ;ind ruinous tompost. I 
must, in passinjj;, mark t\M" you that- 1 hi* fvMui o\ tho swoni 
t>r siokU* vM" IVi'sous, witli wliii^h ht* kills Mtnlusa/' is an- 
Vsothor iiiiai:;o of tho whirhnjj liarpy ViM"t(*\. aiul In^lonns 
ospoi'iaUy {o tiio sworvi of iiostnu"tiv>n vM' annihilation; 
\vlioi\oo it is jiivon ti> tl\o two auiiols wlu> ii.itluM- for dt* 
stTUiMiiMi [he c\\\ harvtvst auvl t*\ il \iiuaiio oi tlu*t\-ntli 
i.Rov. \iv. lo^i. I will oollort afttMwaiils and I'oniplott* 
-v>\vliat I have ahvaily writ ton rospootiuij; tho IVjiastvin and 
i.loi'giMtian U\i»vnds. notin^i;: lioro only what is novossary to 
oxpkain tho oontral niytli v>f Atliona hoi-solf. wlu> ropro- 
sot\ts tl\o anihioi\t air. whioh inohuitnl all oUnul, and rain. 
aiui dow. and darknovss. and poaoo, and wiath v^f hoavon. 
«5 \a>\ n\o now try to jiivo yoti. howovor briotly, sonio distim'j 
idoa of tho sovoral a4:ctM\oit\s of this givat j^nldoss. 

ol/' I. Sl\o is tho air jiiving lifo and hoahli to all 
anin\als. 
II. Sho is tho air iiiving voi;tMati\o powor to tlio 
,v^ oarth. 

111. Sho is tho air pvii^jj: iuotioi\ tv> tho soa. and 

ivndorii\i; navigation possiblo. 
W . She is tho air noiu'ishin^ artitioial lij^ht. toiih 



ATIII'.NA IN 'I HE IIKAVKNH 147 

or \u\u\)\\\[\A, ; «.m <}])])<t¥A'4\ io S\\ii.\. of thr* 
Hun, on of»<! fi-'ifi'l, /'j/i'l of amHuminf/' Urc, 
on f,h<; ot,h<;r. 
V. Hfir: JM f.h<; air r;onv*ryin^ vibmUon of HounH. 
I will Kiv<! you in«ianr;*t« of li<r ui^ofwy in nil Ui<;«i? fun^j'S 

.'',2. I'ifHf , ;>fiH rlji<tfIy,Khr' jm aira« f hr- Hpiri' of lif(;,givjn(( 
vitality to tlj<-. l;|f,o'J. 11';; \>Hyc}t'ii', n;laiion u> the vital 
forr<- in rn;i.t,t,«;r lir:H (\«:(:\)(-l , situi wo. will cxuffi'iru: it, {ifU-r- 
W/'«nJM; hfit /'I. itn-ui. filjffil;<:r of tf/<; fnf;Ht, '\ni<;n;'r'.l'tfiii_ \)U^ to 

Hiif^cM in Ifofn'^r rcy;i.v(\ \\<:r an flying r^v^tr t.hr; (tarth in local 
Mfjfj t,ran?,it,ory Ht,rr;rj|<lij, jtifrif^ly an'l t(n-t(:\y i.\,<- y(,f\<\t:nH 
of fn;Hf) air. 

It, iH curiouH tfiat tix: liritinfi r;it,y which ha« nonu^wlmt 
H/'iiicily Htylf'H itHcif tfic Shxlcni Ailn'ttn in UkU'J'4 more /^ 
ijn<lcr ficr (;Hpc<;ial tutrtla^c suul favor in thin n^Hpcct tfjan 
I^rrfiafm any r^thrtr town in the, iHland. Atficna ih i'trni 
Minif^ly wfiat, in the Mofhtrn At-henx you ho practically find 
]ii:r, the hrcczc of the njountain and tfie nea ; and wfierever 
Hhr! corneH, then^ \h purification, and health, and power, so 
The w?a-heacfi rr^und thin i«le of ourn in the frieze of our 
I';if f lienon ; <;v<;ry wave tfiat hreakn r^n it tfiundern with 
Afhenji/n voice; nay, whenever you throw your window 
wide of>eri in tfir; rnr^rnin^, you let in Athena, aH wiH^iorn and 
fnr:-(h air at tfie huku; in^tarit; and whenever you draw a 25 
piirr;, lon^, full hn^atfi of ri^ht heaven, you take Atfjena 
into your heart, thrr^u^fi your bh;od ; and, with the blr>o(i, 
into the thought.H r;f your hrain. 

Now, thin ^ivin|< of Ktren^^th f;y the air, of>Hf;rve, in 
mechanical aH well an cfienjical. You cannot Htrike a ^oo<J ,30 
filow hut with your chr»Ht full ; and, in fiand to hanri i'n£]i\^ 

* Not a nt^U^tiWu:, but a ^fry \>r(u^,\v'.y,\ au'l t:x\ir(rtm\vii iWHiUm- 
fjon. 



148 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

ing, it is not the muscle that fails first, it is the breath ; 
the longest-breathed will, on the average, be the victor, — 
not the strongest. Note how Shakspeare° always leans 
on this. Of Mortimer, ° in '* changing hardiment with great 
5 Glendower " : 

" Three times they breathed, and three times did they drink, 
Upon agreement, of swift Severn's flood." 

And again, Hotsi3ur,° sending challenge to Prince Harry : 

"That none might draw short breath to-day 
lo But I and Harry Monmouth." 

Again, of Hamlet, ° before he receives his wound : 
" He's fat, and scant of breath." 

Again, Orlando° in the wrestling: 

" Yes ; I beseech your grace 
15 I am not yet well breathed." 

Now, of all people that ever lived, the Greeks knew best 
what breath meant, both in exercise and in battle, and 
therefore the queen of the air becomes to them at once the 
queen of bodily strength in war ; not mere brutal muscular 

20 strength, — that belongs to Ares,° — but the strength of 
young lives passed in pure air and swift exercise, — Ca- 
milla's° virginal force, that "flies o'er the unbending corn, 
and skims along the main.'' 

33. Now I will rapidly give you two or three instances of 

25 her direct agency in this function. First, when she wants 
to make Penelope° bright and beautiful ; and to do away 
with the signs of her waiting and her grief. " Then Athena 
thought of another thing : she laid her into deep sleep, and 
loosed all her limbs, and made her taller, and made her 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 149 

smoother, and fatter, and whiter than sawn ivory; and 
breathed ambrosial brightness over her face ; and so she left 
her and went up to heaven." Fresh air and sound sleep at 
night, young ladies° ! You see you may have Athena for 
lady's maid whenever you choose. Next, hark how she 5 
gives strength to Achilles° when he is broken with fasting 
and grief. Jupiter pities him and says to her, " ' Daughter 
mine, are you forsaking your own soldier, and don't you 
care for Achilles any more? See how hungry and weak 
he is, — go and feed him with ambrosia. '° So he urged 10 
the eager Athena ; and she leaped down out of heaven like a 
harpy falcon, ° shrill-voiced; and she poured nectar and 
ambrosia, full of delight, into the breast of Achilles, that 
his limbs might not fail with famine ; then she returned to 
the solid dome of her strong father." And then comes the 15 
great passage about Achilles arming — for which we have 
no time. But here is again Athena giving strength to the 
whole Greek army. She came as a falcon to Achilles, 
straight at him,° a sudden drift of breeze ; but to the army 
she must come widely, she sweeps around them all. "As 20 
when Jupiter spreads the purple rainbow over heaven, 
portending battle or cold storm, so Athena, wrapping her- 
self round with a purple cloud, stooped to the Greek 
soldiers, and raised up each of them.'' Note that purple, 
in Homer's use of it, nearly always means "fiery," "full of 25 
light." It is the light of the rainbow, not the color of it, 
which Homer means you to think of. 

34. But the most curious passage of all, and fullest of 
meaning, is when she gives strength to Menelaus,° that he 
may stand unwearied against Hector. ° He prays to her: 3° 
"And blue-eyed Athena was glad that he prayed to her, 
first ; and she gave him strength in his shoulders, and in 
his limbs, and she gave him the courage " — of what ani- 



150 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

mal, do you suppose? Had it been Neptiuie or Mars, they 
would have given him the eourage of a bull, or a lion ; but 
Athena gives him the courage of the most fearless in attack 
of all creatures, small or great, and very small it is, but 
5 wholly incapable of terror, — she gives him the courage of 
a fly/ 

35. Now, this simile of Homer's is one of the best in- 
stances I can give you of the way in which great writers 
seize truths unconsciously which are for all time. It is 

lo only recent science which has completely shown the per- 
fectness of this minute symbol of the power of Athena; 
proving that the insect's flight and breath are coordinated ; 
that its wings are actually forcing-pumps, of which the 
stroke compels the thoracic resi)iration ; and that it thus 

15 breathes and liies simultaneously by the action of the same 
muscles, so that respiration is carried on most vigorously 
during flight, ''while the air-vessels, su])})lied by many pairs 
of lungs instead of one, traverse the organs of flight in 
far greater numbers than the capillary blood-vessels of our 

20 own system, and give enormous and untiring muscular 
power, a rapidity of action measured by thousands of 
strokes in the minute, and an endurance, by miles and hours 
of flight."^ 

Homer could not have known this; neither that the 

25 buzzing of the fly was produced, as in a wind instrument, 
by a constant current of air through the trachea. But he 
had seen, and, doubtless, meant us to remember, the mar- 
vellous strength and swiftness of the insect's flight (the 
glance of the swallow itself is clumsy and slow compared 

30 to the darting of common house-flies at play) ; he prob- 
ably attributed its murmur to the wings, but in this also 
there was a type of what we shall presently find recog- 

* Ormerod. "Natural History of Wasps." 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 151 

nized in tho name of Pallas, — the vibratory power of the 
air to convey sound, while, as a purifying ereature, the 
fly holds its pla(;e beside the old symbol of Athena in Egypt, 
the vulture ; and as a venomous and tormenting creature 
has more than the strength of the serpent in proportion to s 
its size, being thus entirely representative of the influence 
of the air both in purification and pestilence ; and its cour- 
age is so notable that, strangely enough, forgetting Ho- 
mer's simile, I happenful to take; th(! (ly for an expression 
of the audacity of freedom in s}>eaking of quite another jo 
subject.* Whether it should be called courage, or mere 
mechanical instinct, may be fiuestioned, but assuredly no 
other animal, exposed to continual danger, is so absolutely 
without sign of fear. 

36. You will, perhaps, have still patience to hear two i^ 
instances, not of the communication as strength, but of 
the personal agency of Athena as the air. When she comes 
down to help Diomed against Ares, she does not come to 
fight instead of him, but she takes his charioteer's place. 

" She snatched the reins, she lashed with all her force, 20 
And full on Mars impelled the foaming horse." 

Ares is the first to cast his spear; then — note this — 
Pope° says : 

"Pallas opposed her hand, and caused to glance, 
Far from the car, the strong immortal lance." 25 

She does not oppose her hand in the Greek — the wind 
could not meet the lance straight — she catches it in her 
hand, and throws it off. There is no instance in which a 
lance is so parried by a mortal hand in all the Iliad, and 
it is exactly the way the wind would parry it, catching it, 30 

* See farther on, § 148. 



152 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

and turning it aside. If there are any good rifleshots here, 
they know something about Athena's parrying; and in 
old times the Enghsh masters of feathered artillery knew 
more yet. Compare also the turning of Hector's lance 
5 from Achilles : Iliad xx. 439. 

37. The last instance I will give you is as lovely as it is 
subtle. Throughout the Iliad, Athena is herself the will 
or Menis of Achilles. If he is to be calmed, it is she who 
calms him; if angered, it is she who inflames him. In 

10 the first quarrel with Atreides,° when he stands at pause, 
with the great sword half drawn, "Athena came from 
heaven, and stood behind him and caught him by the 
yellow hair." Another god would have stayed his hand 
upon the hilt, but Athena only lifts his hair. "And he 

15 turned and knew her, and her dreadful eyes shone upon 
him." There is an exquisite tenderness in this laying her 
hand upon his hair, for it is the talisman of his life, vowed 
to his own Thessahan river if he ever returned to its shore, 
and cast upon Patroclus'° pile, so ordaining that there 

20 should be no return. 

38. Secondly, Athena is the air giving vegetative im- 
pulse to the earth. She is the wind and the rain, and yet 
more the pure air itself, getting at the earth fresh turned° 
by spade or plough, and, above all, feeding the fresh 

25 leaves ; for though the Greeks knew nothing about car- 
bonic acid, they did know that trees fed on the air. 

Now, note first in this, the myth of the air getting at 
ploughed ground. You know I told you the Lord of all 
labor by which man lived was Hephsestus°; therefore 

30 Athena adopts a child of his, and of the Earth, — Erich- 
thonius,° — literally, "the tearer up of the ground," who 
is the head (though not in direct line) of the kings of At- 
tica°; and, having adopted him, she gives him to be 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 153 

brought up by the three nymphs of the dew. Of these, 
Aglauros,° the dweller in the fields, is the envy or malice 
of the earth ; she answers nearly to the envy of Cain,° the 
tiller of the ground, against his shepherd brother, in 
her own envy against her two sisters; Herse,° the cloud s 
dew, who is the beloved of the shepherd ]\Iercury°; and 
Pandrosos,° the diffused dew, or dew of heaven. Literally, 
you have in this myth the words of the blessing of Esau : 
*'Thy dwelling shall be of the fatness of the earth, and of 
the dew of heaven from above. "° Aglauros is for her envy lo 
turned into a black stone ; and hers is one of the voices — 
the other being that of Cain — which haunts the circle of 
envy in the Purgatory : 

" lo sono Aglauro, chi divenne sasso."° 

But to her two sisters, with Erichthonius (or the hero 15 
Erechtheus) , is built the most sacred temple of Athena in 
Athens ; the temple to their own dearest Athena — to 
her, and to the dew together ; so that it was divided into 
two parts : one, the temple of Athena of the city, and the 
other that of the dew. And this expression of her power, 20 
as the air bringing the dew to the hill pastures, in the cen- 
tral temple of the central city of the heathen, dominant 
over the future intellectual world, is, of all the facts con- 
nected with her worship as the spirit of life, perhaps the 
most important. I have no time now to trace for you the 25 
hundredth part of the different ways in which it bears both 
upon natural beauty, and on the best order and happi- 
ness of men's lives. I hope to follow out some of these 
trains of thought in gathering together what I have to say 
about field herbage ; but I must say briefly here that the 30 
great sign, to the Greeks, of the coming of spring in the 
pastures, was not, as with up. in the primrose,° but in 



154 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

the various flowers of the asphodel° tribe (of which I will 
give you some separate account presentl}^) ; therefore it 
is that the earth answers with crocus flame° to the cloud 
on Ida° ; and the power of Athena in eternal life is written 

5 by the light of the asphodel on the Elysian fields. ° 

But further, Athena is the air, not only to the lilies of 
the field, but to the leaves of the forest. We saw before 
the reason why Hermes is said to be the son of Maia,° the 
eldest of the sister stars of spring. Those stars are called 

lo not only Pleiades, ^ but Vergilise, from a word minghng 
the ideas of the turning or returning of springtime with 
the outpouring of rafn. The mother of Vergil bearing the 
name of Maia, Vergil° himself received his name from the 
seven stars ; and he, in forming first the mind of Dante, 

15 and through him that of Chaucer° (besides whatever 
special minor influence came from the Pastorals and 
Georgics) ° became the fountain-head of all the best literary 
power connected with the love of vegetative nature among 
civilized races of men. Take the fact for what it is worth ; 

20 still it is a strange seal of coincidence, in word and in 
reality, upon the Greek dream of the power over human 
life, and its purest thoughts, in the stars of spring. But 
the first syllable of the name of Vergil has relation also to 
another group of words, of which the English ones, virtue 

25 and virgin, bring down the force to modern days. It is 
a group containing mainly the idea of "spring," or in- 
crease of life in vegetation — the rising of the new branch 
of the tree out of the bud, and of the new leaf out of the 
ground. It involves, secondarily, the idea of greenness 

30 and of strength, but primarily, that of living increase of a 
new rod from a stock, stem, or root ("There shall come, 
forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse ")°; and chiefly the 
stem of certain plants — either of the rose tribe, as in the 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 155 

budding of the almond rod of Aaron° ; or of the oHve tribe, 
which has triple significance in this symbolism, from the 
use of its oil for sacred anointing, for strength in the gym- 
nasium, and for light. Hence, in numberless divided and 
reflected ways, it is connected with the power of Hercules 5 
and Athena : Hercules plants the wild olive, for its shade, 
on the course of 01ympia,° and it thenceforward gives the 
Olympic crown of consummate honor and rest ; while the 
prize at the Panathenaic games° is a vase of its oil (mean- 
ing encouragement to continuance of effort) ; and from the 10 
paintings on these Panathenaic vases we get the most 
precious clue to the entire character of Athena. Then to 
express its propagation by slips, the trees from which the 
oil was to be taken were called ''Moriai,"° trees of division 
(being all descendants of the sacred one in the Erecht heum) .° i s 
And thus, in one -direction, w^e get to the ''children hke 
olive plants round about thy*table "° and the olive grafting 
of St. Paul ; while the use of the oil for anointing gives chief 
name to the rod itself of the stem of Jesse, ° and to all those 
who were by that name signed for his disciples first in 20 
Antioch.° Remember, further, since that name was first 
given the influence of the symbol, both in extreme unction° 
and in consecration of priests and kings to their "divine 
right"; and think, if you can reach with any grasp of 
thought, what the influence on the earth has been, of those 25 
twisted branches whose leaves give .gray bloom to the hill- 
sides under every breeze that blows from the midland sea. 
But, above and beyond all, think how strange it is that the 
chief Agonia° of humanity, and the. chief giving of strength 
from heaven for its fulfilment, should have been under its 3° 
night shadow in Palestine. ° 

39. Thirdly, Athena is the air in its power over the sea. 

On the earliest Panathenaic vase known — the " Burgon " 



156 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

vase in the British Museum° — Athena has a dolphin° 
on her shield. The dolphin has two principal meanings 
in Greek symbohsm. It means, first, the sea ; secondarily, 
the ascending and descending course of any of the heavenly 

5 bodies from one sea horizon to another — the dolphins' 
arching rise and replunge (in a summer evening, out of calm 
sea, their black backs roll round with exactly the slow 
motion of a water-wheel; but I do not know how far 
Aristotle's exaggerated account of their leaping or their 

lo swiftness has any foundation) being taken as a type of 
the emergence of the sun or stars from the sea in the east, 
and plunging beneath in the west. Hence, Apollo, when 
in his personal power he crosses the sea, leading his Cretan° 
colonists to Pytho,° takes the form of a dolphin, becomes 

15 Apollo Delphinius, and names the founded colony "Del- 
phi." The lovely drawing of the Delphic Apollo on the 
hydria° of the Vatican (Le Normand and De Witte, vol. 
ii. p. 6) gives the entire conception of this myth. Again, 
the beautiful coins of Tarentum represent Taras° coming 

20 to found the city, riding on a dolphin, whose leaps and 
plunges have partly the rage of the sea in them, and partly 
the spring of the horse, because the splendid riding of the 
Tarentines had made their name proverbial in Magna 
Gr8ecia.° The story of Arion° is a collateral fragment of 

25 the same thought ; and, again, the plunge, before their 
transformation, of the ships of ^neas.° Then, this idea 
of career upon, or conquest of, the sea, either by the crea- 
tures themselves, or by dolphin-like ships (compare the 
Merlin prophecy, ° 

3° "They shall ride 

Over ocean wide 
With hempen bridle, and horse of tree,") 

connects itself with the thought of undulation, and 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 157 

of the wave-power in the sea itself, which is always 
expressed by the serpentine bodies either of the sea-gods 
or of the sea-horse ; and when Athena carries, as she does 
often in later work, a serpent for her shield-sign, it is 
not so much the repetition of her own aegis-snakes as the 5 
further expression of her power over the sea-wave ; which, 
finally, Vergil gives in its perfect unity with her own anger, 
in the approach of the serpents against Laocoon° from the 
sea ; and then, finally, when her own storm-power is fully 
put forth on the ocean also, and the madness of the aegis- 10 
snake is given to the wave-snake, the sea-wave becomes 
the devouring hound at the waist of Scylla,° and Athena 
takes Scylla for her helmet-crest ; while yet her beneficent 
and essential power on the ocean, in making navigation 
possible, is commemorated in the Panathenaic festival by 15 
her peplus° being carried to the Erechtheum suspended 
from the mast of a ship. 

In Plate cxv. of vol. ii., Le Normand, are given two sides 
of a vase, which, in rude and childish way, assembles most 
of the principal thoughts regarding Athena in this relation. 20 
In the first, the sunrise is represented by the ascending 
chariot of Apollo, foreshortened ; the light is supposed to 
blind the eyes, and no face of the god is seen (Turner, ° in 
the Ulysses and Polyphemus ° sunrise, loses the form of 
the god in light, giving the chariot-horses only ; rendering 25 
in his own manner, after 2,200 years of various fall and 
revival of the arts, precisely the same thought as the old 
Greek potter). He ascends out of the sea; but the sea 
itself has not yet caught the light. In the second design, 
Athena as the morning breeze, and Hermes as the morn- 3° 
ing cloud, fly over the sea before the sun. Hermes turns 
back his head; his face is unseen in the cloud, as Apollo's 
in the light; the grotesque appearance of an animal's 



158 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

face is only the eloud-phantasm° modifying a frequent 
form of the hair of Hermes beneath the back of his cap. 
Under the morning breeze, the dolphins leap from the rip- 
pled sea, and their sides catch the light. 

5 The coins of the Liicanian Heracleia give a fair repre- 
sentation of the helmed Athena, as imagined in later Greek 
art, with the embossed Scylla. 

40. Fourthly, Athena is the air nourishing artificial 
light — unconsuming fire. Therefore, a lamp was always 

lo kept burning in the Erechtheum ; and the torch-race 
belongs chiefly to her festival, of which the meaning is to 
show the danger of the perishing of the light even by ex- 
cess of the air that noiu'ishes it ; and so that the race is not 
to the swift, ° but to the wise. The household use of her 

IS constant light is symbolized in the lovely passage in the 
Odyssey, where Ulysses and his son move the armor while 
the servants are shut in their chambers, and there is no one 
to hold torches for them; but Athena herself, "having a 
golden lamp," fills all the rooms with light. Her presence 

2o in war-strength with her favorite heroes is always shown 
by the "unwearied" fire hovering on their helmets and 
shields ; and the image gradually becomes constant and ac- 
cepted, both for the maintenance of household watchful- 
ness, as in the parable of the ten virgins, '^ or as the symbol 

25 of direct inspiration, in the rushing wind and divided 
flames of Pentecost°; but together with this thought of 
unconsuming and constant fire, there is always mingled 
in the Greek mind the sense of the consuming by excess, as 
of the flame by the air, so also of the inspired creature by 

30 its own fire (thus, again, "the zeal of thine house hath 
eaten me up "° — " my zeal hath consumed me, because 
of thine enemies,"^ and the like) ; and especially Athena 
has this aspect towards the truly sensual and bodily 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 159 

strength ; so that to Ares,° who is himself insane and con- 
suming, the opposite wisdom seems to be iasane and 
consuming: "All we the other gods have thee against us, 
O Jove ! when we would give grace to men ; for thou hast 
begotten the maid without a mind — the mischievous 5 
creature, the doer of unseemly evil. All we obey thee, and 
are ruled by thee. Her only thou wilt not resist in any- 
thing she says or does, because thou didst bear her — con- 
suming child as she is." 

41. Lastly, Athena is the air conveying vibration of 10 
sound. 

In all the loveliest representations in central Greek art 
of the birth of Athena, Apollo stands close to the sitting 
Jupiter, singing, with a deep, quiet joyfulness, to his lyre. 
The sun is always thought of as the master of time and 15 
rhythm, and as the origin of the composing-and inventive 
discovery of melody ° ; but the air, as the actual element 
and substance of the voice, the prolonging and sustaining 
power of it, and the symbol of its moral passion. Whatever 
in music is measured and designed belongs therefore to 20 
Apollo and the Muses ; whatever is impulsive and passion- 
ate,° to Athena; hence her constant strength of voice or 
cry (as when she aids the shout of Achilles) ° curiously 
opposed to the dumbness of Demeter.° The Apolline lyre, 
therefore, is not so much the instrument producing sound, 25 
as its measurer and divider by length or tension of string 
into given notes; and I believe it is, in a double connec- 
tion with its office as a measurer of time or motion, and its 
relation to the traasit of the sUn in the sky, that Hermes 
forms it from the tortoise-shell, which is the image of the 30 
dappled concave of the cloudy sky. Thenceforward all 
the limiting or restraining modes of music belong to the 
Muses ; but the passionate music is wind music, as in the 



160 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

Doric flute. ° Then, when this inspired music becomes de- 
graded ill its passion, it sinks into tlie pipe of ran,° and the 
double pipe of Marsyas,° and is then rejected by Athena. 
The myth which represents her doing so is that she in- 
5 vented the double pipe from hearing the hiss of the Gor- 
gonian serpents° ; but when she played upon it, chancing 
to see her face reflected in water, she saw that it was dis- 
torted, whereupon she threw down the flute, which Mar- 
syas foimd. Then, the strife of Apollo and JMarsyas repre- 

losents the enduring contest between music in which the 
words and thought lead, and the lyre measures or melo- 
dizes them (which Pindar means when he calls his hymns 
"kings over the tyre"); ^^^^ music in which the w-ords are 
lost and the wind or impulse leads, — generally, there- 

15 fore, between intellectual, and brutal, or meaningless, 
music. Therefore, when Apollo prevails, he flays Marsyas, 
taking the limit and external bond of his shape from him, 
which is death, without touching the mere muscular 
strength, yet shameful and dreadful in dissolution. 

20 42. And the opposition of these two kinds of sound is 
continually dwelt upon by the Greek philosophers, the real 
fact at the root of all their teaching being this, that true 
music is the natural expression of a lofty passion for a 
right cause ; that in proportion to the kingliness and force 

25 of any personality, the expression either of its joy or suff"er- 
ing becomes measured, chastened, calm, and capable of 
interpretation only by the majesty of ordered, beautiful, 
and worded sound. Exactly in proportion to the degree 
in which we become narrow in the cause and concep- 

3otionof our passions, incontinent in the utterance of them, 
feeble of perseverance in them, sullied or shameful in the 
indulgence of them, their expression by musical sound be- 
comes broken, mean, fatuitous, and at last impossible ; the 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS ICl 

measured waves of the air of heaven will not lend themselves 
to expression of ultimate vice, it must be forever sunk into 
disnordanco or silonco. And sinno, as before stated, every 
work of right art has a tendency to reproduce the ethical 
state which first developed it, this, which of all the arts is 5 
most directly ethical in origin, is also the most direct in 
power of discipline ; the first, the simplest, the most effec- 
tive of all instruments of moral instruction ; while in the 
failure and betrayal of its functions, it becomes the subtlest 
aid of moral degradation. Music is thus, in her health, 10 
the teacher of perfect order, ° and is the voice of the obe- 
dience of angels, and the companion of the course of 
the spheres of heaven ; and in her depravity she is also 
the teacher of perfect disorder and disobedience, and the 
Gloria in Excelsis° becomes the Marseillaise. ° In the 15 
third section of tliis volume, I reprint two chapters from 
another essay of mine C'The Cestus of Aglaia"), on mod- 
esty or measure, and on liberty, containing further ref- 
erence to music in her two powers; and I do this now, 
because, among the many monstrous and misbegotten fan- 20 
tasies which are the spawn of modern li(;ense, perhaps 
the most imj)ishly opposite to the truth is the conception 
of music which has rendered possible the writing, by 
educated persons, and, more strangely yet, the toler- 
ant criticism, of such words as these : " This so persuasive 25 
art is the only one that has no didactic efficacy, that en- 
genders no emotions save such as are without issue on the 
side of moral truth, that expresses nothing of God, nothing 
of reason, nothing of human liberty." I will not give the 
author's name ; the passage is (|uoted in the " Westminster 30 
Review" for last January [1809].° 

4.3. I must also anticipate something of what I have to 
say respecting the relation of the power of Athena to 

M 



162 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

organic life, so far as to note that her name, Pallas, 
probably refers to the quivering or vibration of the air; 
anil to its [unver, whether as vital force, or eoniniiinieated 
wave, over every kind of matter, in giving it vibratory 
5 movement : first, and most intense, in the voice and 
throat of the bird, which is the air incarnate; and so 
descending through the various orders of animal life to the 
vibrating and semi-voluntary nuu-mur of the insect; and, 
lower still, to the hiss or qui\er of the tail of the half- 

lo lunged snake and deaf adder ; all these, nevertheless, being 
wholly under the rule of Athena as representing either 
breath or vital nervous power; and, therefore, also, in 
their simplicity, the "oaten pipe and pastoral song," 
which belong to her dominion over the asphodel meadows, 

15 and breathe on their banks of violets. 

Finally, is it not strange to think of the influence of this 
one power of Pallas in vibration (we shall see a singular 
mechanical energy of it presently in the serpent's motion), 
in the voices of war and peace ? How much of the repose, 

20 how much of the wrath, folly, and misery of men, has 
literally depended on this one power of the air; on the 
sound of the trumpet and of the bell, on the lark's song, 
and the bee's murmur ! 

44. Such is the general conception in the Greek mind 

25 of the physical power of Athena. The s}>iritual power as- 
sociated with it is of two kinds; hrst, she is the Spirit of 
Life in material organism ; not strength in the blood only, 
but formative energy in the clay; and, secondly, she is 
inspired and impulsive wisdom in human conduct and 

30 human art. giving the instinct of infallible decision, and of 
faultless invention. 

It is quite beyond the scope of my present purpose — 
and, indeed, will only be possible for me at all after mark- 



ATHENA IN THE HEAVENS 1C3 

ing the relative intention of llio Ai^olline myths — to 
trace for you the Greek conception of Athena as the guide 
of moral passion. But I will at least endeavor, on some 
near occasion/ to define some (jf tlie actual truths respect- 
ing the vital force in created organism, and inventive fancy 5 
in the works of man, which are more or lr;ss exj>ressed by 
the Greeks, under the jiersonality of Athena. You would, 
perhaps, hardly bear with me if I endeavored further 
to show you — what is nevertheless perfectly true — the 
analogy between the spiritual power of Athena in her 10 
gentle ministry, yet irresistible ang(;r, with the ministry 
of another Spirit whom we also, holding for the universal 
powcir of life, are forbidden, at our worst peril, to quen(;h 
or to grieve. ° 

45. But, I think, to-night, you should not let me close 15 
without requiring of me an answer on one vital point, 
nam<*ly, how far these imaginations of gods — which are 
vain to us — were vain to those who had no better trust? 
and what real belief the Greek had in these creations of his 
own spirit, practical and helpful to him in the sorrow of 20 
earth? I am able to answer you explicitly in this. The 
origin of his thoughts is often obscure, and we may err in 
endeavoring to account for their form of realization ; but 
the effect of that realization on his life is not obscure at all. 
The Greek creed was, of course, different in its character, as 25 
our own creed is, according to the class of persons who held 
it. The common people's was quite literal, simple, and 
happy ; their idea of Athena was as clear as a good Roman 
Catholic peasant's idea of the Madonna. Tn Athens itself, 
the centre of thought and refinement, Pisistratus*^ ob-30 
tained the reins of government through the ready belief of 

' I have tried to do this in mere outline in the two following 
sections of this volume. 



KM TllF QCKKX OF TllF AIR 

tho [H^pubu'o thai a bi\»iuil"ul \\i>iuan, arnunl like AlluMia/'^ 
was tho i»;o(Kloss Ium'soU". IWcn at tlio eloso ot" tlio last ccn- 
turv siHin^ o'( this sim[>lii'i(y romainoil aint>ni;- tho in- 
habitants of thi^ (livok islanils; ami wIumi a |>iotiy Mniilish 

5 laily lirst niadt^ hor way into tho grotto of Antiparos/' sho 
was sunouiulod. on \\cv itMurn. by all tho \\ oiniMi of tlu' 
noiuhborin^- \ illaii'o. b(»lio\ini;- hor to b<^ di\ in(\ aiul pfayin*; 
hor ti> ht\il tlioin o( [\\c\v sioknt^ssis. 

■U). PluMi. soi'oiully. thi^ orooii ot" tho uppor I'lassos was 

lo nioiv rohmnl anil sjuritual. but iiiiito as honosl. ami ovon 
n\oi"o t\u"i'ibU^ in its tMToot on tho lilo. Vou niij^ht iinaj;ino 
that tho iMHi^loymont ot' thi^ artilioo just roforrod [o ini- 
plitul uttor unboliof in tiio porsons oontrivine; it; but it 
roally nioant o\\\y that tlio move worUily ot" thoni would 

15 play with a pt^pular faith iov thiaiown puriH>sos. as dmibly- 
inindod porsons havi^ o(\cn i.\o\\c sinoo. all tho whilo sin- 
ooroly hoKlinii: tho sanio idoas tluMusohos in a move ab- 
stract l\>rni ; whilo tho liood ami unwi>rKlly nion. tho true 
(iftH^k horoos. li\od by thoir faith as llrnily as St. LiMiis,""^ 

30 or tho (.'id/' ov tho C'hoxalior Hayaal/' 

-17. Thon. thirdly, tho faith oi tho pilots and artists was. 
noi't\ssarily. loss dolinito, boing oi>nlinually nunlitiod by tho 
involuntary aotit>n o( thoir own fani'ios; and by tho nooos- 
sity of prosontinii'. in I'loar vorbal or material form, things 

25 of whioh thoy had no autlu>ritat i\o knowlodi>:o. Thoir 
taith was. in sonu> rospoots. liko Panto's or Milton's: 
firm in i:;onoral ooni'option. but not ablo to vouch for ovory 
detail in tho forn\s thoy cavo it ; but thoy wont oonsidor- 
ably farther, oven in that minor sincerity. tl\an subsei|uent 

30 poets; and stnno with all their miiiht to bo as near tho 
truth as thoy oiMild. Piinlar says, (^uitt^ simply. "1 can- 
not think so-and-so of tho ,i;ods. It must liavo boon this 
way — it cannot have bt^on that wav - that tho ihiuir 



ATHENA IN 77/ a; IlKAVKNS 105 

was dofK!." And as lal(! ainorif^ \\n\ LaliriH as tlio (lays of 
Horace, this Hinoority roinuiris. Horace^ is just as irxw; 
and sirripl(! in liis religion as WonlsvvorMi'' ; hut all power 
of undfirslaridinj:; any of \\\v, lioruisl, classic po(rl,s has Ix^cn 
tfikcn away from most I'^n^lish gentlemen hy tlic rru^- 5 
chanical drill in v(MS(!-writing° at school. 'I'lirou^hoiit 
the whole of their lives afterwards, they never can g(!t 
thenns(;lves (juit of the notion that all verses were writt(;n 
as an ex(Tcis(^, and that Minerva was only a convenif^nt word 
for the last of a hexameter,'^ and, J upitci' for the last but one. 10 

48. It is impossible that any notion (;an be mon; fal- 
lacious or more misleading in its consecjuences. All great 
song, from tiie first day when human lif)s conlri\'(!d sylla- 
bles, has been simten; song. With (h^lilxjratc' didactic pur- 
pose the tragedians — with pun; and native; passion the 15 
lyrists fitt(!d th(;ir [x-rfcct words to their df^accst faiths. 
"()[)(!rosa j>arvus (^arniina, fingo." "I, little thing that 1 
am, weave my laborious songs" as earnestly as the bee 
among f he Ix^lls of thyme;'' on \\\v. Matin° mountains. Yes, 
and he dcdi(;at(!S his favorite pine to Diana, and he chants 20 
his autumnal hymn to the Kaun° that guards his fields, 
and he guides tfie noble youth and maids of Rome° in 
their choir to A|)ollo, and lu; tells the farmer's little girl 
that the gods will love lujr, though she has only a, handful 
of salt and meal to give them — just as earnestly as ever 25 
English gentleman taught (christian faith to English youth 

in lOngland's tru(!st days. 

49. Then, lastly, the creed of the philosophers or sages 
varied according to the charact.c^r and knowknlge; of each ; 
their relative ac(juaintance with the secrets of natural 30 
science, their intellectual and sectarian egotism, and their 
mystic or monastic tx;nd(!nci(\s, for there is a classic; as well 
as a mediaeval monasticism. They end in losing the life of 



I(W> • TlIK QUKKN OF TllK MR 

(licccc ill |>l;iy ii|m>ii words; hul wc owv to llicir r;irly 
I lioii^lil some of I he soiiiidcsl el liics, niKl | Ii(> loniid.'il ion of 
the hcsl pr.'icl ic.'il l.-iws, yd known (o m;iiiUiiid. 

50. Such \\;is I lie ^(MUM'.'iI vit.'ilily ol the licntlicn creed 
s in i(s slren^di. Of i(s direcl inlluence on conduci, if. is, 
as 1 s.'iid, iiii|)()ssil)le lor me (o spenk now ; oidy, remeinlKT 
nlw.'iys, in ende.'i\t)rin^ (o rorni a jikIhiikmiI ol" i(, MimI what, 
of u;ood or ri<;li( (lie li(>a(li(Mis did, (li(\v did looking foi* no 
reward. TIk* |)iiresl rornis of our own religion lia\'e al- 

i'>ways coiisisled in sacrilicin^ less (Iiin_i2;s lo wifi greater, 
(ini(« (() win (>lerni(y, (lie world (o win (he skies. The 
order, "sell (lial thou lias(," is not ^iNoii without (ho 
promise, " ( liou slialt ha\o treasure in lieax'en";" and woll 
for ( he iiKxhan ( lirist ian if he a('C(>|)(s ( he al(erna( ixo as his 

15 Master lelt it, and does not |)rac( ically read (he command 
and ])roinise ( liiis : " Sell ( ha( ( liou has( in ( lit> I)(>s( niarke( , 
and ( hou shah \\\\\v (reasurt^ in eternity also." Hu( (he 
poor (ii'eeks of (he i;rea( af;"es (>\|)(>c(e(l no r(W\ard Irom 
h(*a\'en l)u( honor, and no ic^ward iVom eardi l)u( res( ; 

3o (jiou<!;h, when, on (hose coiidi(ioiis, (hey pa(ien(ly, and 
proudly, fuKilled (heir (ask of (he ;;raii(ed day, an un- 
reasonini!; ins(inc( ol" an immor(al I)ened!c(ion broke litiin 
(luar lips in son*;' ; ;ind (hey, e\(Mi (h(>y, had some(imes a 
proplie( (o t(>ll tluMii ol" a land "where (Ikm'c is sun alik(» 

!\ l>y day and alii<e h\ nii;lit, where* tht>y shall iu>ed no moro 
(o (rouble (he ear(li by s(reii<i;tli ol" hands for daily bread; 
bul (he ocean bre(v,es blow around (he blessed islands, and 
golden (lowers burn on (heir bri<;h( (rec^s for ev(M'in()re." 



II 

ATllKNA KIOHAMITIS* 

{Athena in, Ihr, Earth) 

HTUF)Y, HUI'I'LIOMKNTAKV 'I'O 'IIIK I'lU'X'KDIN^; LECTURE, OK 
TIIK SUI'l'OSKI) AND ACTlIAIi UKI.A'I'IONH OK ATHKNA TO 
rilK VITAF. FORCE IN MATERIA I. OR(JANISIVl 

51. I'l' li;i,s been c.'isy to dcciplicr .'ipproxiiiinlcly IIk; 
(\uH',k conccplion ol' IIh; pliysic.'il p()vv(!r of Allicrui in cloud 
and sky, because w(; know ourselves \vli;i(, clouds and skies 
lire,, and what the Utrca of the wind is in forniin^ thorn. 
Mul, it is nol, at all (^'isy to 1 ra(;(^ tin; (ireek thoughts about 5 
t,h(; j)()W{!r of Atluina in ^ivin^ life, becjiusc! we do not our- 
s(!1v(;h know (;learly what lile is, or in what way the air in 
n(!<;(;ssary to it, or what lhei(! is, b(!sid(!S tli(; air, shaping 
th(! forms that it is put inlo. And it is (rornparatively of 
small eonse(|uenc(! lo find out what th(; (Jnieks thought or lo 
meant, until w(; have determined what we ourst^lves tliink, 
or m(!an, whef) wr. tianslatr; tlu; (Jrec^k woi'd for "breath- 
ing "° into lh(! L.'ilin-I'ln^lish word "spiiil." 

.')2. hul ii is of ^reat conse<|uenc(! that you should fix 
in your minds and hold, ;i|i:;;iins(- thr; })aseness of men!!,"; 
maferialism on tlu; orn; h;ind, ;ind against th(; fallacies of 
(jontroversial speculation on \\h\ other — the certain and 

* "Atliciui, fil for Ixiiifr iriinlc inlo ]>i>\.U'ry." I coin tlic cxprcH- 
Hioti jiH a coiinf crjiarl, ol yrj irapO/i/ia, "Cljiy intact." 

107 



108 THE QUEKN OF TUK AIR 

prnclicnl s(Misi^ of (liis word "si)irit "; the souso in which 
yon all Unow (lint its ronlity exists, as (he power whioh 
shapoil you into your shape, and by whieh you love and 
hale wluM\ you ha\e received (hat shaj)e. You need not 
5 fear, on (In^ one hand. Ihal either th(^ sculi)turin.i; or the 
lovinj;' powcM- can c\ im- \)c beaten down by thi^ philosopiiers 
into a metal, or (^voKed by them into a j;as, but on the 
otluM' hand, take care that you yourselves, in trvinj]j to 
el(^\ate your conci*i)(ion of it. do not lose its truth in a. 

lodivam, or (^\(Mi in ;i word. lUnvan' always of contending 
for words: you will find them not easy to s»:rasp. if you 
know I hem in s(^V(M;d lan|]juages. This \ery word, which 
is so solemn in y«>ur mouths, is one of the most dcnibtful. 
In Latin it nu^ins little more than breathinii;, anil may 

15 moan miMtdy accent ; in French it is not breath, but wit, 
and cnu' n(Mi!;hbors arc tluMvfore oblii!;(Hl. even in their most 
solenui exi>r(\ssions, to say "wit " when we say "«2:host." 
Tn (ireek, "pntMuna." tlu^ woul we translate "ghost," 
means either wind or breath, and the relative word 

20 "psyche" has, piM'haps. a more subtle power; yet St. 
Paul's''' words "pneumatic body" and "{)sychic body" 
in\'ol\e a diiVercncc in his mind which no words will ex- 
plain. Hut in ({rec^k and in English, and in Saxon and in 
Hebrew, and in ev(M-y articulate tongiu^ o( humanity the 

25"s[>irit of man" truly nu\ans his passion and virtue, and 
is stately accordiuii; to the height of his conception, and 
stable according to the measure of his endurance. 

58. l^ndurance, or patience, that is the central sign of 
spirit ; a constancy against tlu^ cold and agony of death; 

30 and as. pliysically. it is by the burning })ower of the air 
that the heat of tiu^ llesh is sustained, so this Athena, 
spiritually, is the ipuHMi o{ all glowing virtue, the uncon- 
suming lire and inner lamp of life. And thus, as Ilephirs- 



ATIIKNA IN TIIK EARTH 101) 

tus is lord of tlio Ww. of tho hand, ;ind A|)()llo of I lie fin; 
of ilio hr.'tin, ho AMi(;n.'i. of \\\v fin^ of I. Ik; licnrl ; riiid as 
H(!r('ul(!H wears for his cliicf armor the; ,skin of lh(! N(!tri(r;in 
lion/^ his vh'wi oncmy, whom \m k1(;w ; arxl A|)oll() li.is for 
his hi<!;h(^st, n;i,mo "the Pylhiari," froin liis (;hi(!f ciKimy, IJk; 5 
I*yl,hon,° slain ; so Aflicna bciars always on \\v.v breast th(! 
deadly faee of her ehi(;f enemy slain, (he (Jor^oninn eold, 
and venomous a^ony, th<*it turns living men to ston(\ 

54. And so lonjj; as you have tluit [m\ of the heart within 
you, and know th(! ns'ility of it, you \w.oA Ix; under no alarm 10 
as to the possibility of its ehetnieal or meehanical analysis. 
The philosopliers •ayc. w.vy humorous in their ecstasy of 
ho|>e about it; but the rc.'d interest of their dis('ov(!ri(!S in 
this direction is vury suimII to huitiimkind. It is quite true 
that the tymp;irium of tin; e;ir vibrates under sound, 15 
and that the surface of the watcsr in a ditch vibrates too ; 
but the ditch hears nothing for all that ; and my hearing 
is still to rn(! as bl(!ss(;d a myst(;ryas ever, and tlu; intc^rval 
b(;twe(!n the ditch and m(; <juit(! as great. If \\n\ t nimbling 
sound in my ears was once of tin; niarriag(!-bell vvhi(;h be- 20 
gan my hap|)in(!ss, and is now of the passing-bell which 
ends it., the diffcuc^nce betwc^en those two sounds to m(! can- 
not b(; count.ed by the numb(!r of concussions. TlKire 
have; been sonu; curious spcfMjIations latcily as to the 
conveyance! of rrnMital consciousness by " br,*iin-w.'iV(!S." 25 
What does it matter how it is convened? The conscious- 
ness itself is not a wave. It may In; accompanied here 
or tlusre by any quantity of (juivf^rs and shakes, up or 
down, of anything you can find in the universe that is 
shakable — what is that to me? My friend is dead, and 30 
my — according to modern viciws — vibratory sorrow is 
not on(; whit less, or less mysterious, to me, than my old 
quiet one. 



170 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

55. l^oyond, and rnlin^ly unaffected by, any question- 
ings of this kind, tluM'o are, therefore, two plain facts 
which we should all know: first, that there is a j)ower 
whi('h gives thcMr sev(>ral shaj)es to things, or cai)acities 
5 of shape; and, secondly, a, power which gives them their 
scleral f(M>lings, or capacities of f(>(^ling; and that we can 
increase or destroy both of these at our will. By care and 
tenderness, we can extend the range of lovely life in plants 
and animals; by our neglec^t and cru(>lty, we can arrest it, 

lo niid bring pestilen(H^ in its stead. Again, by right disci- 
pline we can increase our strength of noble will and pas- 
sion or destroy both. And whether these two forces are 
local conditions of the elements in which they apj)ear, or 
•M'v part of a, great force in (he universe, out. of which they 

15 are taken, and to which they nuist be restored, is not of 
tii(^ sliglitc^st. imi)ortanc(^ to us in d(>aling with them; 
n(>i(h(M- is tiu^ manner of th(Mr connection with light and 
air. VVhai i)recise meaning we ought, to attach to expres- 
sions such as that of the prophecy to the four winds that 

20 the dry bones might: be breathed upon, and might live,° or 
why the presence of the vital power should be dependent 
on the chemical action of the air, and its awful jKissing 
aAvay materially signified by the nuidering up of that 
breath oi" ghost, we cannot at present know, and need not 

25 at any time dispute. What we assuredly know is that the 
stales of life and death are different, and the first more 
desirable than the other, and by effort attainabl(\ whether 
we understand being " born of the spirit "° to signify having 
the breath of heaven in our tiesh, or its j)ower in our hearts. 

30 5(). As to its power on the body, 1 will endeavor to tell 
you, having been myself much led into studies involving 
nec(\ssarv n^fer(Mice both to natural science and mental 
phenomena, what, at least, remains to us after sciencQ 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 171 

has done its worst ; what the myth of Athena, as a forma- 
tive and decisive power, a spirit of creation and voHtion, 
must eternally mean for all of us. 

57. It is now (I boliove I may use the strong word) 
" ascertained "° that heat and motion are fixed inquan-s 
tity, and measurable in th(» jiorlions that we deal with. 
We can measure our i)ortions of power, as we can measure 
portions of space ; while yet, ^s far as we know, space may 
be infinite, and force infinite. There may be heat as much 
greater than the sun's, as the sun's heat is greater than a lo 
candle's; and force as much greater than the force by 
whi(!h the world swings, as that is greater than the force 
by which a cobweb trembles. Now, on heat and force, life 
is inseparably dependent ; and I believe, also, on a form 
of substance, which (he philosophers call "protoplasm." 15 
I wish they would use I^]nglish instead of (h'eek words. 
When I want to know why a leaf is green, they tell me it is 
(colored by "chloroi)hyll," which at first sounds very in- 
structive ; but if they would only say plainly that a leaf is 
colored green by a thing which is called "green leaf," we 20 
should see more precisely how far we had got. However, 
it is a curious fact that life is connected with a cellular 
structure called protoplasm, or in l<]nglish, "first stuck 
together"; whence, conceivably through deuteroplasms, 
or second stickings, and trit<)i)lasms, or third stickings,' 25 

' Or, perhaps, we may be indulged with one consiinunatiiiK 
p;U\ini of "glycasm," visiWe "Sweetness," — according to the 
good old monk, " Full moon," or " All moonshine." I cannot 
get at his original Greek, but am content with M. Durand's clear 
l-'rench (Manuel d'lconograpiiie Chr6tienne.° Paris, 1815): 30 
" Lorsfjue vous aurez fait le j)roplasine, et escpiisse un visage, vous 
f(>rez les chairs avec le glycasnie dont nous avons donn<5 la re- 
cette. Chez les vieillards, vous inditiuerez les rides, et chez les 
jeunes gens, les angles dez yeux. Cest ainsi qui I'on fait les 
chairs, suivant Panselinos."° 35 



172 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

we reach the highest plastic phase in the human pottery, 
which differs from common chinaware, primarily, by a 
measurable doiiroe of heat, developed in breathing, which 
it borrows from the rest of the universe while it li^'es, and 

5 which it as certainly returns to the rest of the universe, 
when it dies. 

58. Again, with this heat certain assimilative powers 
are connected, which the tendency of recent discovery is to 
simjilify more and more into modes of one force ; or finally 

lo into mere motion, communicable in various states, but not 
destructible. We will assume that science has done its 
utmost ; and that every chemical or animal force is demon- 
strably resolvable into heat or motion, reciprocally chang- 
ing into each other. I would myself like better, in order 

15 of thought, to consider motion as a mode of heat than heat 
as a mode of motion ; still, granting that we have got thus 
far, we have yet to ask, What is heat? or what motion? 
What is this ''primo mobile," this transitional power, in 
which all things live, and move, and have their being°? 

2o It is by definition something different from matter, and 
we may call it as we choose, "first cnuse," or "first light," 
or "first heat"; but we can show no scientific proof of 
its not being personal, and coinciding with the ordinary 
conception of a supporting spirit in all things. 

25 59. Still, it is not advisable to apply the word "spirit" 
or "breathing" to it, while it is only enforcing chemical 
affinities; but, when the chemical affinities are brought 
under the influence of the air, and of the sun's heat, the 
formative force enters an entirely different phase. It does 

30 not now merely crystallize indefinite masses, but it gives 
to limited portions of matter the power of gathering, selec- 
tively, other elements proper to them, and binding these 
elements into their own peculiar and adopted form. 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 173 

This force, now properly called life, or breathing, or 
spirit, i.5 continually creating its own shell of definite shape 
out of the wreck round it ; and this is what I meant by 
saying, in the "Ethics of the Dust,"° "you may always 
stand by form against force." For the mere force of 5 
junction is not spirit ; but the power that catches out of 
chaos charcoal, water, lime, or what not, and fastens them 
down into a given form, is projjerly called ''spirit " ; and we 
shall not diminish, but strengthen our conception of this 
creative energy by recognizing its presence in lower states 10 
of matter than our own ; such recognition being enforced 
upon us by delight we instinctively receive from all the 
forms of matter which manifest it ; and yet more, by the 
glorifying of those forms, in the parts of them that are 
most animated, with the colors that are pleasantest to our 15 
senses. The most familiar instance of this is the best, 
and also the most wonderful : the blossoming of plants. 

60. The spirit in the plant — that is to say, its power of 
gathering dead matter out of the wreck round it, and shap- 
ing it into its own chosen shape — is of course strongest 20 
at the moment of its flowering, for it then not only gathers, 
but forms, with the greatest energy. 

And where this life is in it at full power, its form be- 
comes invested with aspects that are chiefly delightful to 
our own human passions ; namely, first, with the loveliest 25 
outlines of shape ; and, secondly, with the most brilliant 
phases of the primary colors, blue, yellow, and red or 
white, the unison of all ; and, to make it all more strange, 
this time of peculiar and perfect glory is associated with 
relations of the plants or blossoms to each other, corre-30 
spondent to the joy of love in human creatures, and having 
the same object in the continuance of the race. Only, 
with respect to plants, as animals, we are wrong in speak- 



174 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

ing as if the object of this strong life were only the bequeath- 
ing of itself. The flower is the end or proper object of 
the seed, not the seed of the flower. The reason for seeds 
is that flowers may be ; not the reason of flowers that seeds 
5 may be. The flower itself is the creature which the spirit 
makes; only, in connection with its perfectness is placed 
the giving birth to its successor. 

61. The main fact, then, about a flower is that it is the 
part of the plant's form developed at the moment of its 

lo intensest life ; and this inner rapture is usually marked 
externally for us by the flush of one or more of the primary 
colors. What the character of the flower shall be, depends 
entirely upon the portion of the plant into which this rap- 
ture of spirit has been put. Sometimes the life is put into 

IS its outer sheath, and then the outer sheath becomes white 
and pure, and full of strength and grace ; sometimes the 
life is put into the common leaves, just under the blossom, 
and they become scarlet or purple ; sometimes the life is 
put into the stalks of the flower and they flush blue ; some- 

2o times into its outer enclosure or calyx ; mostly into its 
inner cup ; but, in all cases, the presence of the strongest 
life is asserted by characters in which the human sight 
takes pleasure, and which seem prepared with distinct 
reference to us, or rather, bear, in being delightful, evi- 

25 dence of having been produced by the power of the same 
spirit as our own. 

62. And we are led to feel this still more strongly 
because all the distinctions of species/ both in plants and 

^ The facts on which I am about to dwell are in nowise antago- 
30 nistic to the theories which Mr. Darwin's** unwearied and unerr- 
ing investigations are every d'Aj rendering more probable. The 
aesthetic relations of species are inde2)endent of their origin. 
Nevertheless, it has always seemed to me, in what little work I 
have done upon organic forms, as if the species mocked us by 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 175 

animals, appear to have similar connection with human 
character. Whatever the origin of species may be, or 
however those species, once formed, may be influenced by 
(external accident, the groups into vvhif;h birth or accident 
reduce them have distinct relation to the spirit of man. It 5 
is perfectly possible, and ultimately conceivable, that 
the crocodile and the lamb may have descended from 
the same ancestral atom of protoplasm ; and that the 
physical laws of the operation of calcareous slime° and of 
meadow grass, on that protoplasm, may in time have de- 10 
veloped the opposite natures and aspects of the living 
frames ; but the practically important fact for us is the 
existence of a power which creates that calcareous earth 
itself, — which creates, that separately — and quartz, 
separately ; and gold, separately ; and charcoal, separately ; 15 
and then so directs the relation of these elements as that 
the gold shall destroy the souls of men by being yellow; 
and the charcoal destroy their souls by being hard and 
bright ; and the quartz represent to them an ideal purity ; 
and the calcareous earth, soft, shall beget crocodiles, and, 20 
dry and hard, sheep ; and that the aspects and qualities 
of these two products, crocodiles and lambs, shall be, the 
one repellent to the spirit of man, the other attractive 
to it, in a quite inevitable way ; representing to him states 
of moral evil and good ; and becoming myths to him of de- 25 
struction or redemption, and, in the most Hteral sense, 
"words "of God. 

63. And the force of these facts cannot be escaped from 
by the thought that there are species innumerable, passing 
into each other by regular gradations, out of which we 30 
choose what we most love or dread, and say they were 

their deliberate imitation of each other when they met; yet did 
not pass one into another. 



I7G TllK QVKKN OA' TllK AIR 

'iikIimmI i)roi)}ii'(Ml foi" us. S|)(M'i(>s ar(^ not innuinornblo ; 
lUMlhor nro llu\v "ovv doiuuM'tcd by coiisislt^il ^nuL'ition. 
Tlu'v IoucIj mI (icmMmim poinis only ; nnd ('V(Mi Mumi mpo con- 
lUM'Icd, wluMi we (>\.'iniin(> IIkmu (l('('|)ly, in .m kind of rclicu- 
5 Inlcd vvny, not in cli.'iins, hut in ('Ii(M|U(M-s; nlso, liowovor 
coniKM'Icd, it is l)u( by a- touch of the (extremities, as it 
\v(M-(\ and tlie characterislic form of the s|)(M'i(\s is (Miliroly 
in<hvi(hiai. The rose nearly sinks into a ^rass in the san- 
^uisorba ; but the formal i\'e s|)ii"it does not the less elearly 

iose|)nrale (he ear of wheat fi"om (he do^-rose, and oseilUite 
\vi(h (remulous eonslaiiey round the eenlral forms of both, 
ha.vinjj; each their i\\u^ relation (o (he mind of man. The 
ji;real. anim.ul kingdoms are eonnecled in (lu^ same wtiy. 
The bird (hr()Uj2;h (lie |)en,i!;uin drops lowards (he fish, and 

15 (he lish in (lu^ ('(Macean r(\'ise(Mids (o (he mammal, yet there 
is no confusion of (hou,nh( possibh* b(M\V(V>n (he perfect 
foiins of an eai^le, a (rou(, and a war-horse, in (heir re- 
la(ions (o (he el(Mnen(s, and (o man. 

(>1. Now we ha\(> (wo ordcM's of animals lo take some 

ao iiol(> of in conn(M'(ion wilh AlluMia, and o\w vast order of 
planls, which will illus(ra((* (his ma((iM- very suffieiently 
for us. 

The oi"d(M-s of animals are (h(> s(M"p(Mi( and (hi^ bird: 
[\\o s(M-pen( , in which {\\c brealh or spirit, is less than in any 

35o(h(M' crealure, and (he car(h-power greatest; the bini, 
in which Ww brea( h or spirit is more full than in any other 
ereature, and the earth-powcM- l(\ist. 

(ir). We will (ak(e (lu^ bird lirs(. It is li((l(» more than a 
drift of thc^ air brought in(o form by i>lumes; the air is in 

30 all its (piills. it br(\i(hes (hrouji;h its whole frame and llesh, 
and f;lows with air in its llyin_i>;. like blown (lame; it rests 
upon the air, subdues it, surpassc^s it, outraces it, — is the 
air, conscious of itself. compuM-ing itself, ruling itself. 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 177 

Also, in the throat of the bird is given the voice of the 
air. All that in the wind itself is weak, wild, useless in 
sweetness, is knit top;cthor in its song;. As we may imagine 
the wild form of (ho cloud closed into the perfocit form of 
the bird's wings, so the wikl voice of the cloud into ils 5 
ordered and commanded voice; unwearied, rii)pling 
through the clear heaven in its gladness, interpreting all 
intense passion through the soft spring nights, bursting 
into acclaim and rapture of choir at daybreak, or lisping 
and twittering among the boughs and hedges through heat 10 
of day, like little winds that only make the cowslip bells 
shake, and ruffle the i)etals of the wild rose. 

66. Also, upon the plumes of the bird are put the colors 
of the air; on these the gold of the cloud, that cannot be 
gathered by any covetousness ; the rubies of the clouds, 15 
that are not the price of Athena, but are Athena ; the v(»r- 
milion of the cloud-bar, and the flame of the cloud-crest, 
and the snow of the cloud, and its shadow, and the melted 
blue of the deep wells of the sky, — all these, s(Mzed by the 
creating spirit, and woven by Athena herself into films 20 
and threads of plume; with wave on wave following and 
fading along breast, and throat, and opened wings, infi- 
nite as the dividing of the foam and the sifting of the sea- 
sand; even the white down of the cloud seeming to flutter 
up between the stronger plumes, — seen, but too soft for 25 
touch. 

And so the Spirit of the Air is put into, and upon, this 
created form ; and it becomes, through twenty centuries, 
the symbol of divine help, descending, as the Fire, to 
speak, ° but as the Dove, to bless.° 30 

67. Next, in the serpent we approach the source of a 
group of myths, world-wide, founded on great and com- 
nion human instincts, res})ecting which I must note one or 

N 



178 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

two points which bear intimately on all our subject. For 
it seems to me that the scholars who are at present oc- 
cupied in interpretation of human myths have most of 
them forgotten that there are any such thing as natural 
5 myths, and that the dark sayings of men may be both 
difficult to read, and not always worth reading, but the 
dark sayings of nature will probably become clearer for 
the looking into, and will very certainly be worth reading. 
And, indeed, all guidance to the right sense of the human 

lo and variable myths will probably depend on our first get- 
ting at the sense of the natural and invariable ones. The 
dead hierogIyph° may have meant this or that ; the living 
hieroglyph means always the same; but remember, it is 
just as much a hieroglyph as the other; nay, more, — a 

15 "sacred or reserved sculpture," a thing with an inner 
language. The serpent crest of the king's crown, or of the 
god's, on the pillars of Egypt, is a mystery, but the ser- 
pent itself, gliding past the pillar's foot, is it less a mystery ? 
Is there, indeed, no tongue, except the mute forked flash 

20 from its lips, in that running brook of horror on the 
ground ? 

68. Why that horror ? We all feel it, yet how imagina- 
tive it is, how disproportioned to the real strength of the 
creature ! There is more poison in an ill-kept drain, in a 

25 pool of dish-washings at a cottage door, than in the dead- 
liest asp of Nile. Every back yard which you look down 
into from the railway, as it carries you out by Vauxhall or 
Deptford, holds its coiled serpent ; all the walls of those 
ghastly suburbs are enclosures of tank temples for serpent- 

30 worship ; yet you feel no horror in looking down into them, 
as you would if you saw the livid scales and lifted head. 
There is more venom, mortal, inevitable, in a single word, 
sometimes, or in the ghding entrance of a wordless thought, 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 179 

than ever "vanti Libia con sua rena."° But that horror 
is of the myth, not of the creature. There are myriads 
lower than this, and more loathsome, in the scale of being ; 
the links between dead matter and animation drift every- 
where unseen. But it is the strength of the base element 5 
that is so dreadful in the serpent ; it is the very omnipo- 
tence of the earth. That rivulet of smooth silver, how 
does it flow, think you? It literally rows on the earth, 
with every scale for an oar; it bites the dust with the 
ridges of its body. Watch it, when it moves slowly. A 10 
wave, but without wind ! a current, but with no fall ! 
all the body moving at the same instant, yet some of it 
to one side, some to another, or some forward, and the 
rest of the coil backwards, but all with the same calm will 
and equal way, no contraction, no extension; one sound- 15 
less, causeless, march of sequent rings, and spectral pro- 
cessions of spotted dust, with dissolution in its fangs, dis- 
location in its coils. Startle it, the winding stream will 
become a twisted arrow; the w^ave of poisoned life will 
lash through the grass like a cast lance. ^ It scarcely 20 

^ I cannot understand this swift forward motion of serpents. 
The seizure of prey by the constrictor, though invisibly swift, is 
quite simple in mechanism; it is simply the return to its coil of 
an opened watch-spring, and is just as instantaneous. But the 
steady and continuous motion, without a visible fulcrum (for the 25 
whole body moves at the same instant, and I have often seen 
even small snakes glide as fast as I could walk), seems to involve 
a vibration of the scales quite too rapid to be conceived. The 
motion of the crest and dorsal fin of the hippocampus," which is 
one of the intermediate types between serpent and fish, perhaps 30 
gives some resemblance of it, dimly visible, for the quivering 
turns the fin into a mere mist. The entrance of the two barbs 
of a bee's sting by alternate motion, "the teeth '.f one barb act- 
ing as a fulcrum for the other," must be something like the 
serpent motion on a small scale. ^^ 



180 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

breathes with its one luiiu; ((lie t)lluM* shrivelled and abor- 
tive) ; it is |);issi\'e (o (lie sun ;mu1 shade, and is cold or 
hoi like a. stoni*; y(*t "it can oulclind) liie monkey, out- 
swim tlu* (ish. ()iitlea[) the zebra, oiit\vri\s(le (lie athlete, 
5 and crush the tij!;er."' It is a di\in(^ hieroglyph of the 
diMuoniac power of the earth, ol" the entire earthly nature. 
As the bird is the clothed power of (he air, so this is the 
clothed power of the dust; as the bird the symbol of the 
spirit of life, so this of the grasp and sting of death. 

lo 1)9. Hence the continual change in the interpretation 
put u[)on it in various religions. As the worm of corrup- 
lion, it is the mightiest of all adversaries of the gods — 
the special adversary of their light and creative power — 
IVtlion against Aj)ollo. As (he [)t)wer of tlu> earth against 

15 the air, t he* giants are serpent -bodied in the (ligantoma- 
chia''; but as llu^ power of the earth upon the seed — con- 
suming it into nc^w life ("that whicli thou sowest is not 
(]uickened except i( die")° — serpents sustain the chariot 
of (he s[)irit of agiicullure. 

20 70. Yet, on the other liand, there is a power in the earth 
to take away eorru[)tion, and (o purify (hence the very fact 
of burial, and many uses of ear(h, only lately known) ; 
and in this sense the serpent is a healing spirit, — the 
re[)resentative of J*]sculapius,° and of IlygieiaA\; and is a 

as sacred earth-ty{)e in the temple of (he Dew, being there es- 
pecially a symbol of (he na(ive earth of Athens ; so (hat its 
departure from the tempU* was a sign to the Athenians 
that they were to lea\e (heir homes. And then, lastly, 
as (here is a s(reng(h and healing in (he ear(h, no less than 

30 the strengdi of air, so (here is conceived (o be a wisdom 
of earth no less than a wisdom of the spirit ; and when its 
deadly power is killed, its guiding power becomes true ; so 

^ Richard Owen. 



ATTIKNA IN THE EARTH 181 

that the Python serpen! is killed at Delphi, ° where ycit the 
oracle is from the breath of \\\v. e.ui h. 

71. You iiiiist reiiieniher, lio\vev(!r, that in this, as in 
every other instan(;(^, 1 take tin; myth at its central time. 
This is only the meaning of the serpent to the Greek mind 5 
wlii(!h could conceive an Atlu^na. Its first meaning to 
the nasc(;nt eyes° of men, and its continu(;d iiifluc^nce 
over de^ra(l(;d races, are subjects of the most fearful mys- 
tery. Mr. Fergusson has just (;ollected the principal evi- 
d(!n('e bearin<j; on the inntt er in a work of v(»ry ^nvat value, 10 
and if you read his op(!iiiri^ (chapters, they will put you in 
I)ossession of t Ik; (circumstances needing chic^fly to be; con- 
sid(M-(»d. 1 cannot tou(rli u|)()n any of them hen;, exc(^pt 
only to point- out that, tJiou^li tlu; doetrirn! of the so-called 
"corruptJ')n of human nature," asserting that there is 15 
nothing but (evil in hum.'inity, is just as blasphemous and 
false as a d()(;tnne of the corruption of physi(;al nature 
would be, asserting there was nothing but evil in the earth, 
— there is y(;t the ck^arest evi(l(!nce of a dis(!ase, plague, or 
cretinous imp(!rfection of development, hitherto allow(;d 20 
to jjrevail against the gr(3ater part of the racces of nuin; 
and this in monstrous ways, more full of mystery than 
the serp(;nt-being itself. I have gat hei'cd for you to-night 
only instances of what is beautiful in (Ineek r(!ligi(jn; but 
even in its best time there were deep corruptions in other 25 
phases of it, and degi'.aded forms of many of its deit ies, all 
originating in a misundeistood worship of the principle 
of life ; while in the religions of lower races, little less than 
thes(; corrupt ('(1 forms of (hivotion can Ik; found, all having 
a strang(j and dreadful consistency with each other, and 30 
infe(!ling ('hrist ianity, even at its strongest periods, with 
fatal terror of doctrine, and ghastliness of symbolic con- 
ception, passing through fear into frenzied grotesrjue,® 
and thence into sensuality. 



182 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

In (ho Ps;il((M- of Si. Louis" ilsolf, lialf of its IoMcm-s are 
(wisl(Ml snakes; IIum'o is scarcely a wivatlicd ornament, 
employed in Christian (lr(\ss, or arehitoeture, whieli can- 
not 1)(» (raccMl hack (o the stM-pcMil 's coil; and (luM'e is rarely 
5a piece of njonkish decorated wrilinj; in llu» worhl (hat is 
no( (ain((>(l \vi(h sonu^ ill-in(>an( vikMiess of j!;rotos(iue, — 
nay, (he very leaxes of (he (\vis(ed ivv-pa((ern of the 
fourtconth century can be followed back to wreaths for 
tlio foreheads of bacchanalian jjjods. And truly, it seems 

10 to nie, as I i>;a(h(M" in my mind (he evidences of insane 
reli<»;ion, d(\<!;ra(led art , merciless war, sullen toil, detestable 
l)l(\isure, and vain or vile hope, in which (he nations of 
(he world hax'c li\'ed since* first (lu\v could bear record of 
(luMns(>lves -- it seems (o me, 1 say, as if (he race itself 

15 wert» still half-serpent, not extricated yet from its clay; 
a lacerlini*'-' brinnl of bi((erness — the glory of i( emaciate 
wi(h cruel huni!;iM', and blo((ed with vtMiomous s(ain, and 
tile track of i(. on (he leaf a glittering slime, and in the 
sand a useless furrow. 

20 72. There are no my(hs, (herefore, by which the moral 
state and fineness of in(elligence of dilTerent races can be 
so deei)ly tried or measured, as by those of the serpent and 
the bird; both of them having an especial relation to the 
kind of retnorst* for sin, ov for grief in fate, of which the 

25 national minds (hat spoke by (hem had been capable. 
The serpen( and vuKun* an* alike* embl(*ms of immortality 
and purification among races which desired to be immortal 
and [)uie; and as they recognize th(*ir own misery, the 
serpent becomcvs \o (hem (he scourge* of (he Furies, and 

3o(hevul(ure finds i(s e((*rnal prey in (heir breast. The 
binl long contests among (he I<]gyp(ians with the still 
rec(*iveil serpent symbol of i^ower. But the Draconian 
image of evil is establislu*d in the serpent Apap; while 



ATHENA JN TIIK KAKTII 183 

iho bird's winpjs, willi \\\v, ^lob(i, hvromv. pail of \i Ix^ttcr 
Kyrnhol of dcMty, and iJu; oniiro form of \\\v. viill tirn, as an 
orril)l(un of purificniior), is .'issocijilod wilh t.lu^ c.'irlicst vow- 
(•,(^[)l,ion of Allicri.'i. In [\n\ lyjx; of Mm; dove, vvilli tlu; olivo 
branch, ° tho conf^cption of the spirit of AiFicna in r(!nowod 5 
lif(5 prevailing over ruin is (unbodied for lh(^ whole of fu- 
liH"i(,y; while the (Ireeks, to whom, in a, hap|)ier elimato 
and fii^her lif(i than thai of IOfi;ypt, Ww. vultun; symbol of 
(^learisin^ Ixicarru^ iniin(,eHijz;il)Ie, took th(^ ea|»;le instead for 
tfi(!ir }ii(>ro^lypli of sn|)nwne sj)iril ual (!n(;r^y, and it tlKUUH!- 10 
forward retains its hold on tlin human imagination, till 
it is ostablish('d among (-firistian myths as tlu; expression 
of the most (;xalt(;d form of (n^ang(!listie t(!aeliing. The 
special relation of Ath(uia to \\v.v favorite bird wv, will 
tracts presently ; the p(;a(H)c,k of Hera,° and dove of Af)hro- 15 
(lite, ° are (•om[)ara,tively unimf)ortant myths; but the bird 
power is soon ma(i(^ entirely hinnan by tin; (Jreeks in their 
flying ang(;l of victory (partially human, with modified 
meaning of (;vil, in th(^ Ilarf)y and Siren) ; and lhenc(^- 
forward it associal(\s itself witli tlie Hebrew chctrubim," 20 
and has had the most singular influence on the Christian 
religion by giving its wings to render the conception 
of a,ng(!ls mysterious and unt(;nabl(;, and (^h(u;k rat ional en- 
d(;av()r to determine the nature of subordinate^ spiritual 
agency ; while yet it lias given to that agency a vagu(^ poet- 25 
ical influ(;nce of th(^ higlu^st value in its own imaginative 
way. 

73. But with the early serpent-worsliip tJien^ was as- 
sociated another, t hat, of t.lu^ grov(;s, of which you will also 
find tli(! (!videnc(^ exhaustively colletrted in Mr. Kergus- 30 
son's° work. 'I'liis tree-worshi[) may have taken a dark 
form whenassociat(Ml with t Ik; Draconian one;" ; or opposed, 
as in Judea,° to a purer faith; but in itself, 1 believe, it 



IHl 



TIIK QVKKN or TIIK Alii 



w.'i.s nlw.'iys lic-illliy, ;m(l lliou^li i(. rclniiis liKlc <I('f'mi((> 
irK'r()jj;lyi)l»i<' powcf in siil)S('((ii«Mil I'cli^ion, it Imm-oiiics, iii- 
hI('.M(I oI" syniholic, rcnl; (lie IIowims mikI (hm'S iivi* Ihcm- 
H('lv(\s Ix^hcld Mild l>(>l(iv«'(l with n lirilf \vorslii|)|)*m^ (I(>Ii;j;IU 
5 wliicli is Mhwiys noble miuI licnllliliil. 

And il is .'iinoiii!; Ilir mosi iiol.MhIc indicnlions of (he vo- 
lilioii of ( lu>!mim,'i( inj; powtM- llinl we lind UmmMIucmI sij:;j)s 
of ^(tod .Mild e\il scl on ( licse also, ms well ns upon animals ; 
(he xcnoniol I he ,s('i|)en( , ;ind in some respects ils ima|!;e 

I*' nlsc), beiii;^ associated even will) llie passionless <;row(li 
of (he leal" oiil of I he ground; while (he disi inci i«>ns of 
species seem ap|)oinled willi more delinile elhical address 
jo (he in(('lli}.';ence of man as (heir material |)rodiic(s Imi- 
coine more useliil (o him. 

15 71. I can <'asily show (his, and, a( (he same (ime, make 
clear (he i(>la(ion (o o( her plants of (he Mowers which es- 
p(»cially Ju'lon^ (o ,\(hena, by examininL!; (he na(nral mylhs 
in llu» groups of (he |)lan(s which would he usimI al any 
eounlry dinner, oxer which Alhcna would, in her simplesi 

JO houS(>hoId au(hori(y, cheeirully rule here in l']n,i;land. Sup- 
pose" Horace's laNorid' dish of beans, with tin* bacon; 
pota(o«»s; some sa\'ory s(uHinu; ol" onions and heibs, with 
(he in(>a( ; <'(>ltM"y, and a radish or (wo, with the cheese; 
nuts .and apples for d<vsser( , and brown br(\'id. 

35 7r). The beans are, from earlies( (ime. (he inos( impor- 
(nnl and in((M(\s(inu; of (he scmmIs of the <;rea( ( rilu> of plants 
fron\ M'hich c.Mine (he I^aiin .and P'rench nanu* for .all 
kilchen v<\u;e(.Mbl(\s, (hinii;s jh.Ml .are ^.atluMtuI with (he 
li.'ind jjodded s(H»ds Ih.at c.annol be re.aped, or bealen, 

^o or sh.ik«>n down, but nuist b(» i!;.M(hered ^ihhmi. " Ia»^u- 
minous" plan(s,"' .all of tluan h;i\in,i;" (lowers like butda;- 
llles, .scmmIs in Oi*'*|"''"* '>' p<'ud(M»() fxxls, -"ketuni sili- 
qu.a nu.ass.ante lei;um(M» "'" smooth .ami ttMuier leaA'es, 



ATUKNA IN rilK KAHtU 185 

(li\ i(l('(l into mniiy iiiinof ones ; si iiiii/jjc .'kIjiiiicIs ol Icmlfil, 
lor climl)!!!!!; (.mikI soinclimcs of I horn) ; ('X(Hii.sil(Oy swcci, 
yd pure, scciils of hiossorii, and jiimosl iiIwmvs linrmlcsM, 
if ijol, Hcrvicc.'ihlc, seeds. II is of .mII Irihcs ol" plniils llio 
iiiosi (Icrmilc, ils hlossoms l)ciii«i; ciilircly liinilcd in IIkmp.s 
p.Mi'ls, nnd nol p.-issin;:; into oilier forms. II is iilso IIk^ 
mosi usefully exiended in r.'in^e .'iiid s<';de ; fjiiniiinr in 
I lie height of I lie lores! MC'ici;!, I.'ihnriunn, .lud;is free; 
f;imili.ir in llie sown field heun Jind vel('h";ind pen ; Im- 
niilinr in llie piislure in every form of eluslenMJ clover lo 
jiiid sweet trefoil tnicery"; the jnost entirely servieeid)le 
mid hum.'in of .<ill orders of phtnts. 

7(). Nexl, in the pol;ito, we h.Mve the senreely innoe<>nt 
under^roun<l stem of one of ;i, tribe set nside for evil ; hav- 
ing I he de.'idly nightshade for its (|ueen, and including the 15 
henhaiie, the wileh's mandrake, and the worst natural 
eurs(^ of modern civilization tobacco.' And the stran^(^ 
tiling nl)()Ut this trib(» is, that thoufjjh thus .set asidi^ for (^vil, 
I liey iin\ not a jjjroup distinctly separate from those that tiro 
liappi(M* ifi fumrtion. There is nolhifif!; in other tribes of ao 
plants like the form of the bean blossom; but there is 
another fnniily with forms and siruelure closely con- 
neete(I with this venomous one. Mxamine the pur|)le atid 
yellow bloom of the common hed|;(' ni;;htslia(Ie; you will 
find it constructed exactly like some of I he foi?iis of the J5 
(^yclainen, and, ;z;('tlin;j; this clue, you will lind at. last \\\v. 
whole poisonous and terrible; ^roup to be sistcM's of the 
|)riniula,H! 

The iji^htshades are, in fad, primroses with a, curHo 
upon them; and a si^n set in their petals, by which the .30 

' \l is not (>Msy to rMliiiiiitc tlic (iciiiortili/iiiK (>nVct on tlic yoiitli 
of I'liiropc of tlu> cigur, in cnaltling (licni to puHH (heir time iiupplly 
ill idlcneuM. 



186 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

deadly and condemned flowers may always be known from 
the innocent ones, — that the stamens of the nightshades 
are between the lobes, and of the primulas, opposite the 
lobes, of the corolla. ° 
5 77. Next, side by side, in the celery and radish, you have 
the two great groups of umbelled and cruciferous plants° ; 
alike in conditions of rank among herbs : both flowering in 
clusters; but the umbelled group, flat, the crucifers, in 
spires; both of them mean and poor in the blossom, and 

lo losing what beauty they have by too close crowding ; 
both of them having the most curious influence on human 
character in the temperate zones of the earth, from the 
days of the parsley crown, and hemlock drink, ° and 
mocked Euripidean chervil, ° until now; but chiefly 

IS among the northern nations, being especially plants that 
are of some humble beauty, and (the crucifers) of endless 
use, when they are chosen and cultivated ; but that run 
to wild waste, and are the signs of neglected ground, in 
their rank or ragged leaves and meagre stalks, and pursed 

2o or podded seed clusters. Capable, even under cultivation, 
of no perfect beauty, though reaching some subdued de- 
lightfulness in the lady's smock and the wallflower; for 
the most part they have every floral quality meanly, and 
in vain, — they are white, without purity ; golden, with- 

25 out preciousness ; redundant, without richness ; divided, 
without fineness ; massive, without strength ; and slender, 
without grace. Yet think over that useful vulgarity of 
theirs; and of the relations of German and English peas- 
ant character to its food of kraut and cabbage (as of Arab 

30 character to its food of palm-fruit), and you will begin to 
feel what purposes of the forming spirit are in these disr 
tinctions of species. 

78. Next we take the nuts and apples, — the nuts 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 187 

representing one of the groups of catkined trees, ° whose 
blossoms are only tufts and dust; and the other, the 
rose tribe, in which fruit and flower alike have been 
the types, to the highest races of men, of all passionate 
temptation, or pure delight, from the coveting of Eve° 5 
to the crowning of the Madonna, above the 

" Rosa sempiterna, 
Che si dilata, rigrada, e ridole 
Odor di lode al Sol."° 

We have no time now for these, we must go on to the hum- 10 
blest group of all, yet the most wonderful, that of the grass 
which has given us our bread; and from that we will go 
back to the herbs. 

79. The vast family of plants which, under rain, make 
the earth green for man, and, under sunshine, give him 15 
bread, and, in their springing in the early year, mixed with 
their native flowers, have given us (far more than the new 
leaves of trees) the thought and word of " spring," divide 
themselves broadly into three great groups — the grasses, 
sedges, and rushes. The grasses are essentiall}^ a clothing 20 
for healthy and pure ground, watered by occasional 
rain but in itself dry, and fit for all cultivated pasture 
and corn. They are distinctively plants with round and 
jointed stems, which have long green flexible leaves, and 
heads of seed, independently emerging from them. The 25 
sedges are essentially the clothing of waste and more or less 
poor or uncultivated soils, coarse in their structure, fre- 
quently triangular in stem — hence called "acute" by 
Virgil — and with their heads of seed not extricated from 
their leaves. Now, in both the sedges and grasses, the 30 
blossom has a common structure, though undeveloped in 
the sedges, but composed always of groups of double husks, 



188 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

which have mostly a spinous process® in the centre, some- 
times projecting into a long awn or beard ° ; this central 
process being characteristic also of the ordinary leaves of 
mosses, as if a moss were a kind of ear of corn made per- 
5 manently green on the ground, and with a new and distinct 
fructification. But the rushes differ wholly from the sedge 
and grass in their blossom structure. It is not a dual 
cluster, but a twice threefold one, so far separate from the 
grasses, and so closely connected with a higher order of 

10 plants, that I think you will find it convenient to group 
the rushes at once with that higher order, to which, if you 
will for the present let me give the general name of Dro- 
sidje, or dew-plants, it will enable me to say what I have to 
say of them much more shortly and clearly. 

IS 80. These Drosida?, then, are plants delighting in inter- 
rupted moisture — moisture which comes either partially 
or at certain seasons — into dry ground. They are not 
water-plants, but the signs of water resting among dry 
places. Many of the true water-plants have triple blos- 

2o soms, with a small triple calyx holding them ; in the 
Drosidae the floral spirit passes into the calyx also, and the 
entire flower becomes a six-rayed star, bursting out of the 
stem laterally, as if it were the first of flowers and had 
made its way to the light by force through the unwilling 

25 green. They are often required to retain moisture or 
nourishment for the future blossom through long times 
of drought; and this they do in bulbs under ground, of 
which some become a rude and simple, but most whole- 
some, food for man. 

30 81. So, now, observe, you are to divide the whole family 
of the herbs of the field into three great groups, — Drosidae, 
Carices,^ Graminese, — dew-plants, sedges, and grasses. 

^ I think Carex will be found ultimately better than Cyperus for 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 189 

Then the Drosidae are divided into five great orders : hhes, 
asphodels, amarylHds, irids, and rushes. °- No tribes of 
flowers have had so great, so varied, or so healthy an influ- 
ence on man as this great group of Drosiche, depending, not 
so much on the whiteness of some of their blossoms, ors 
the radiance of others, as on the strength and delicacy of 
the substance of their petals ; enabling them to take forms 
of faultless elastic curvature, either in cups, as the crocus, 
or expanding bells, as the true lily, or heath-like bells, as 
the hyacinth, or bright and perfect stars, like the star of lo 
Bethlehem, or, when they are affected by the strange reflex 
of the serpent nature which forms the labiate group of all 
flowers, closing into forms of exquisitely fantastic sym- 
metry in the gladiolus. Put by their side their Nereid 
sisters, the water-lilies, ° and you have in them the origin 15 
of the loveliest forms of ornamental design, and the 
most powerful floral myths yet recognized among human 
spirits, born by the streams of Ganges, Nile, Arno, and 
Avon.° 

82. For consider a little what each of those five tribes ^ 20 
has been to the spirit of man. First, in their nobleness, the 
lilies gave the lily of the Annunciation°; the asphodels, 
the flower of the r]lysian fields ; the irids, the fleur-de-lys° 
of chivalry; and the amaryllids, Christ's lily of the field°; 
while the rush, trodden always under foot, became the 25 
emblem of humility. Then take each of the tribes, and 

the generic name, being the Vergilian word, and representing a 
larger sub-species. 

2 Take this rough distinction of the four tribes: liHes, superior 
ovary, wliite seeds; asphodels, superior ovary, bhick seeds; irids, 30 
inferior ovary, style (typically) rising into central crest; amaryl- 
lids, inferior ovary, stamens (typically) joined in central cup. 
Then the rushes are a dark group, through which they stoop to 
the grasses. 



190 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

consider the extent of their lower influence. Perdita's° 
''The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds/' are the first tribe, 
which, giving the type of perfect purity in the Madonna's 
lily, have, by their lovely form, influenced the entire deco- 
5 rative design of Italian sacred art ; while ornament of war 
was continually enriched by the curves of the triple petals 
of the Florentine ''gigho,"° and French fleur-de-lys; so 
that it is impossible to count their influence for good in 
the middle ages, partly as a symbol of womanly character, 

lo and partly of the utmost brightness and refinement of 
chivalry in the city which was the flower of cities. 

Afterwards, the group of the turban-lilies, or tulips, did 
some mischief (their splendid stains having made them 
the favorite caprice of florists) ; but they may be pardoned 

15 all such guilt for the pleasure they have given in cottage 
gardens, and are yet to give, when lowly life may again 
be possible among us ; and the crimson bars of the tulips 
in their trim beds, with their likeness in crimson bars of 
morning above them, and its dew glittering heavy, globed 

20 in their glossy cups, may be loved better than the gray 
nettles of the ash heap, under gray sky, unveined by ver- 
mihon or by gold.° 

83. The next great group, of the asphodels, divides it- 
self also into two principal families : one, in which the 

25 flowers are like stars, and clustered characteristically in 
balls, though opening sometimes into looser heads; and 
the other, in which the flowers are in long bells, open- 
ing suddenly at the lips, and clustered in spires on 
a long stem, or drooping from it, when bent by their 

30 weight. 

The star-group, of the squills, garlics, and onions, has 
always caused me great wonder. I cannot understand 
why its beauty, and serviceableness, should have been as- 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 191 

sociated with the rank scent which has been really among 
the most powerful means of degrading peasant life, and 
separating it from that of the higher classes. 

The belled group, of the hyacinth and convallaria,° 
is. as delicate as the other is coarse ; the unspeakable azure 5 
light along the ground of the wood hyacinth in English 
spring ; the grape hyacinth, which is in south France, as 
if a cluster of grapes and a hive of honey had been distilled 
and compressed together into one small boss of celled and 
beaded blue ; the lilies of the valley everywhere, in each 10 
sweet and wild recess of rocky lands, — count the in- 
fluences of these on childish and innocent life ; then meas- 
ure the mythic power of the hyacinth and asphodel as 
connected with Greek thoughts of immortality; finally 
take their useful and nourishing power in ancient and 15 
modern peasant life, and it will be strange if you do not 
feel what fixed relation exists between the agency of the 
creating spirit in these, and in us who live by them. 

84. It is impossible to bring into an}^ tenable compass 
for our present purpose, even hints of the human influence 20 
of the two remaining orders of Amaryllids and Irids ; only 
note this generally, that while these in northern countries 
share with the Primulas the fields of spring, it seems that in 
Greece, the primulacese are not an extended tribe, while 
the crocus, narcissus, ° and AmarylHs lutea, the ''lily of 25 
the field " (I suspect also that the flower whose name we 
translate "violet" was in truth an iris) represented to the 
Greek the first coming of the breath of life on the renewed 
herbage ; and became in his thoughts the true embroidery 
of the saffron robe of Athena. Later in the year, the dian- 30 
thus (which, though belonging to an entirely different 
race of plants, has yet a strange look of having been made 
out of the grasses by turning the sheath-membrane at the 



192 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

root of their leaves into a flower) seems to scatter, in mul- 
titudinous families, its crimson stars far and wide. But 
the golden lily and crocus, together with the asphodel, 
retain always the old Greek's fondest thoughts, — they 
5 are only "golden" flowers that are to burn on the trees, 
and float on the streams of paradise. 

85. I have but one tribe of plants more to note at our 
country feast — the savory herbs ; but must go a little 
out of my way to come at them rightly. All flowers whose 

lo petals are fastened together, and most of those whose 
petals are loose, are best thought of first as a kind of cup or 
tube opening at the mouth. Sometimes the opening is 
gradual, as in the convolvulus or campanula ; oftener there 
is a distinct change of direction between the tube and ex- 

15 panding lip, as in the primrose ; or even a contraction 
under the lip, making the tube into a narrow-necked phial 
or vase, as in the heaths ; but the general idea of a tube 
expanding into a quatrefoil, cinquefoil, or sixfoil, ° will 
embrace most of the forms. 

20 86. Now, it is easy to conceive that flowers of this kind, 
growing in close clusters, may, in process of time, have 
extended their outside petals rather than the interior ones 
(as the outer flowers of the clusters of many umbellifers 
actually do), and thus elongated and variously distorted 

25 forms have established themselves ; then if the stalk is 
attached to the side instead of the base of the tube, its base 
becomes a spur, and thus all the grotesque forms of the 
mints, violets, and larkspurs, gradually might be com- 
posed. But, however this may be, there is one great tribe 

30 of plants separate from the rest, and of which the influence 
seems shed upon the rest in different degrees ; and these 
would give the impression, not so much of having been 
developed by change, as of being stamped with a character 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 193 

of their own, more or less serpentine or dragon-like. And 
I think you will find it convenient to call these generally, 
Draconidoe; disregarding their present ugly botanical 
name which I do not care even to write once — you may 
take for their principal types the foxglove, snapdragon, 5 
and calceolaria" ; and you will find they all agree in a 
tendency to decorate themselves by spots, and with bosses 
or swollen places in their leaves, as if they had been touched 
by poison. The spot of the foxglove is especially strange, 
because it draws the color out of the tissue all around it, 10 
as if it had been stung, and as if the central color was really 
an inflamed spot, with paleness round. ° Then also they 
carry to its extreme the decoration by bulging or pouting 
the petal, — often beautifully used by other flowers in a 
minor degree, like the beating out of bosses in hollow silver, 15 
as in the kalmia, beaten out apparently in each petal by 
the stamens instead of a hammer ; or the borage, ° pouting 
inwards ; but the snapdragons and calceolarias carry it to 
its extreme. 

87. Then the spirit of these DraconidsB seems to pass 20 
more or less into other flowers, whose forms are properly 
pure vases ; but it affects some of them slightly, others not 
at all. It never strongly affects the heaths; never once 
the roses ; but it enters like an evil spirit into the butter- 
cup, and turns it into a larkspur, with a black, spotted, gro- 25 
tesque centre, and a strange, broken blue, gorgeous and 
intense, yet impure, glittering on the surface as if it were 
strewn with broken glass, and stained or darkening irregu- 
larly into red. And then at last the serpent charm changes 
the ranunculus into monkshood, and makes it poisonous. 30 
It enters into the forget-me-not, and the star of heavenly 
turquoise is corrupted into the viper's bugloss, darkened 
with the same strange red as the larkspur, and fretted into 
o 



194 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

a fringe of thorn ; it enters, together with a strange insect- 
spirit, into the asphodels, and (though with a greater inter- 
val between the groups) they change into spotted orchidese ; 
it touches the poppy, it becomes a fumaria; the iris, 

5 and it pouts into a gladiolus ; the lily, and it chequers it- 
self into a snake 's-head, and secretes in the deep of its bell, 
drops, not of venom indeed, but honey-dew, as if it were a 
healing serpent. For there is an ^Esculapian^ as well as an 
evil serpentry among the Draconidse, and the fairest of 

lothem, the ''erba della Madonna ''° of Venice (Linaria 
Cymbalaria), descends from the ruins it delights in to the 
herbage at their feet, and touches it ; and behold, instantly, 
a vast group of herbs for healing, — all draconid in form, 
— spotted and crested, and from their lip-like corollas 

15 named "labiatse""; full of various balm, and warm 
strength for healing, ° yet all of them without splendid 
honor or perfect beauty, "ground ivies," richest when 
crushed under the foot; the best sweetness and gentle 
brightness of the robes of the field, — thyme, and mar- 

20 joram, and Euphrasy. 

88. And observe, again and again, with respect to all 
these divisions and powers of plants: it does not matter 
in the least by what concurrences of circumstance or 
necessity they may gradually have been developed; the 

25 concurrence of circumstance is itself the supreme and in- 
explicable fact. We always come at last to a formative 
cause, which directs the circumstance, and mode of meet- 
ing it. If you ask an ordinary botanist° the reason of 
the form of a leaf, he will tell you it is a "developed tuber- 

30 cle," and that its ultimate form " is owing to the directions 
of its vascular threads." But what directs its vascular 
threads? "They are seeking for something they want," 
he will probably answer. What made them want that? 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 195 

What made them seek for it thus? Seek for it, in five 
fibres or in three ? Seek for it, in serration, or in sweep- 
ing curves ? Seek for it, in servile tendrils, or impetuous 
spray ? Seek for it, in woollen wrinkles rough with stings, 
or in glossy surfaces, green with pure strength, and winter- $ 
less delight? 

89. There is no answer. But the sum of all is, that over 
the entire surface of the earth, and its waters, as influenced 
by the power of the air under solar light, there is developed 

a series of changing forms, in clouds, plants, and animals, lo 
all of which have reference in their action, or nature, to the 
human intelligence that perceives them ; and on which, in 
their aspects of horror and beauty, and their qualities of 
good and evil, there is engraved a series of myths, or words 
of the forming power, which, according to the true passion 15 
and energy of the human race, they have been enabled to 
read into religion. And this forming power has been by 
all nations partly confused with the breath or air through 
which it acts, and partly understood as a creative wisdom, 
proceeding from the Supreme Deity ; but entering into 20 
and inspiring all intelligences that work in harmony with 
Him. And whatever intellectual results may be in mod- 
ern days obtained by regarding this effluence only as a 
motion of vibration, every formative human art hitherto, 
and the best states of human happiness and order, have 25 
depended on the apprehension of its mystery (which is 
certain), and of its personality, which is probable. 

90. Of its influence on the formative arts, I have a few 
words to say separately : my present business is only to 
interpret, as we are now sufficiently enabled to do, the ex- 30 
ternal symbols of the myth under which it was represented 
by the Greeks as a goddess of counsel, taken first into the 
breast of their supreme Deity, then created out of his 



196 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

thoughts, and abiding closely beside him ; always sharing 
and consummating his power. 

91. And in doing this we have first to note the meaning 
of the principal epithet applied to Athena, "Glaukopis/'° 

5 "with eyes full of light," the first syllable being connected, 
by its root, with words signifying sight, not with words 
signifying color. As far as I can trace the color percep- 
tion of the Greeks, I find it all founded primarily on the 
degree of connection between color and light ; the roost 

lo important fact to them in the color of red being its con- 
nection with fire and sunshine ; so that ''purple'' is, in its 
original sense, "fire-color," and the scarlet, or orange, of 
dawn, more than any other fire-color. I was long puzzled 
by Homer's calling the sea purple ; and misled into think- 

15 ing he meant the color of cloud shadows on green sea; 
whereas he really means the gleaming blaze of the waves 
under wide light. Aristotle's° idea (partly true) is that 
light, subdued by blackness, becomes red ; and blackness, 
heated or lighted, also becomes red. Thus, a color may 

20 be called purple because it is light subdued (and so death 
is called " purple " or " shadowy " death) ; or else it may be 
called purple as being shade kindled with fire, and thus 
said of the lighted sea ; or even of the sun itself, when it is 
thought of as a red luminary opposed to the whiteness 

25 of the moon: "purpureos inter soles, et Candida lunse 
sidera° ; " or of golden hair : " pro purpureo poenam solvens 
scelerata capillo°;" w^hile both ideas are modified by the 
influence of an earlier form of the word, which has nothing 
to do with fire at all, but only with mixing or staining ; and 

30 then, to make the whole group of thoughts inextricably 
complex, yet rich and subtle in proportion to their in- 
tricacy, the various rose and crimson colors of the murex- 
dye,° — the crimson and purple of the poppy, and fruit 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 197 

of the palm, — and the association of all these with the 
hue of blood, — partly direct, partly through a confusion 
between the word signifying "slaughter" and "palm-fruit 
color/' mingle themselves in, and renew the whole nature 
of the old word ; so that, in later Uterature, it means a 5 
different color, or emotion of color, in almost every place 
w^here it occurs; and casts forever around the reflection 
of all that has been dipped in its dyes. 

92. So that the word is really a liquid prism, and stream 
of opal. And then, last of all, to keep the whole history 10 
of it in the fantastic course of a dream, warped here and 
there into wild grotesque, we moderns, who have pre- 
ferred to rule over coal-mines instead of the sea (and so 
have turned the everlasting lamp of Athena into a Davy's 
safety-lamp° in the hand of Britannia, and Athenian 15 
heavenly lightning into British subterranean "damp"),° 
have actually got our purple out of coal instead of the sea ! 
And thus, grotesquely, we have had enforced on us the 
doubt that held the old word between blackness and fire, 
and have completed the shadow, and the fear of it, by 20 
giving it a name from battle, "Magenta." 

93. There is precisely a similar confusion between light 
and color in the word used for the blue of the eyes of 
Athena — a noble confusion, however, brought about by 
the intensity of the Greek sense that the heaven is light, 25 
more than it is blue. I was not thinking of this when I 
wrote, in speaking of pictorial chiaroscuro, ° " The sky is not 
blue color merely : it is blue fire and cannot be painted " 
(Mod. P. iv. p. 36) ; but it was this that the Greeks 
chiefly felt of it, and so "Glaukopis" chiefly means gray- 3° 
eyed ; gray standing for a pale or luminous blue ; but it 
only means "owl-eyed" in thought of the roundness 
and expansion, not from the color; this breadth and 



198 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

brightness being, again, in their moral sense typical of the 
breadth, intensity, and singleness of the sight in prudence 
("if thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of 
light ").^ Then the actual power of the bird to see in twi- 
5 light enters into the type, and perhaps its general fineness 
of sense. "Before the human form was adopted, her 
(Athena's) proper symbol was the owl, a bird which 
seems to surpass all other creatures in acuteness of organic 
perception, its eye being calculated to observe objects 

lo which to all others are enveloped in darkness, its ear to 
hear sounds distinctly, and its nostrils to discriminate 
effluvia with such nicety that it has been deemed pro- 
phetic, from discovering the putridity of death even in the 
first stages of disease." ^ 

15 I cannot find anywhere an account of the first known oc- 
currence of the type ; but, in the early ones on Attic coins, ° 
the wide round eyes are clearly the principal things to be 
made manifest. 

94. There is yet, however, another color of great im- 

20 portance in the conception of Athena — the dark blue of 
her segis. Just as the blue or gray of her eyes was con- 
ceived as more light than color, so her aegis was dark blue, 
because the Greeks thought of this tint more as shade than 
color, and, while they used various materials in ornamenta- 

25 tion, lapislazuli,° carbonate of copper, or, perhaps, smalt, ° 
with real enjoyment of the blue tint, it was yet in their 
minds as distinctly representative of darkness as scarlet 
was of light, and, therefore, anything dark,^ but especially 

^ Payne Knight"* in his "Inquiry into the Symbolical Language 

30 of Ancient Art," not trustworthy, being little more than a mass of 

conjectural memoranda, but the heap is suggestive, if well sifted, 

2 In the breastplate and shield of Atrides° the serpents and 
bosses are all of this dark color, yet the serpents are said to be 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 199 

the color of heavy thunder-cloud, was described by the 
same term. The physical power of this darkness of the 



like rainbows; but through all this splendor and opposition of 
hue, I feel distinctly that the literal "splendor," with its relative 
shade, are prevalent in the conception ; and that there is always a 5 
tendency to look through the hue to its cause. And in this feel- 
ing about color the Greeks are separated from the eastern nations, 
and from the best designers of Christian times. I cannot find 
that they take pleasure in color for its own sake; it may be in 
something inore than color, or better; but it is not in the hue it- lo 
self. When Homer describes cloud breaking from a mountain 
summit, the crags become visible in light, not in color; he feels 
only their flashing out in bright edges and trenchant shadows; 
above, the "infinite," "unspeakable" aether is torn open — but 
not the blue of it. He has scarcely any abstract pleasure in blue, 15 
or green, or gold ; but only in their shade or flame. 

I have yet to trace the causes of this (which will be a long task, 
belonging to art questions, not to mythological ones) ; but it is, 
I believe, much connected with the brooding of the shadow of 
death over the Greeks without any clear hope of immortality. 20 
The restriction of the color on their vases to dim red (or yellow) 
with black and white, is greatly connected with their sepulchral 
use, and with all the melancholy of Greek tragic thought ; and in 
this gloom the failure of color-perception is partly noble, partly 
base: noble, in its earnestness, which raises the design of Greek 25 
vases as far above the designing of mere colorist nations like the 
Chinese, as men's thoughts are above children's; and yet it is 
partly base and earthly, and inherently defective in one human 
faculty; and I believe it was one cause of the perishing of their 
art so swiftly, for indeed there is no decline so sudden, or down 30 
to such utter loss and ludicrous depravity, as the fall of Greek 
design on its vases from the fifth to the third century B.C. On 
the other hand, the pure colored-gift, when employed for pleasure 
only, degrades in another direction ; so that among the Indians, 
Chinese, and Japanese all intellectual progress in art has been 35 
for ages rendered impossible by the prevalence of that faculty; 
and 3'et it is, as I have said again and again, the spiritual power 
of art ; and its true brightness is the essential characteristic of all 
healthy schools. 



200 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

rrgis, friii_i;(Ml wilh lii»;hlnin*!;, is i»;iv(Mi quite simply whrn 
Jupiter liinisell' uses it to overshadow Ida and tlie 
Plain of Troy,° and withdraws it at the prayer of Ajax° 
for lif:;]i( ; and a|j;ain wIumi he j!;rants it to be worn for a 
5 time by A{)()llo, who is hidden by its eloud when he strikes 
down Patroelus ; but its s[)iritual power is chiefly ex- 
pressed by a word signifying deeper shadow, — the gloom 
of l^]rebus,° or of our ev(Miing, which when spoken of the 
a^gis, signifies, nof merely (lie incUgnation of Athena, but 

lo the entire luding or wilhdinwal of her helj). and beyond 
even fhis, h(>r de;ulli(^s( of all hosfilify, — the darkness by 
which she luM'sell" dec(>ives and ])eguiles to final ruin those 
to whom sh(^ is wholly advcM'se; this contradiction of her 
own glory b(Mng (he uttermost judgment upon human 

15 falsehood. Thus it is she who provokes Pandarus° to 
the treachery wliicli puri)osed to fulfil the rape of Helen° 
by the murder of h(M- husband in time of truce; and then 
the Greek king, iiolding his wounded brother's hand, 
prophesies against Troy the darkness of the irgis which 

20 shall be over all and forever.' 

95. This, UuMi, finally, was the ]")erfect color-conception 
of Afhena : the flesh, snow-whife ((lie hands, feet, and fac3 
of marble, even when (he s(a(ue was hewn roughly in 
wood) ; tlu^ eyes of k(HM\ paU^ blue, often in statues repre- 

25 senfed by jewels ; the long rolx^ to (he fe(^(, crocus-colored ; 
and (he a^gis thrown over it of (hunderous purple; the 
helmet goldcMi (Tl. v. 744), and I su})pose its crest also, as 
that of Achilles. 

If you (hink carefully of (he meaning and character 

30 which is now enough illus(ra(ed for you in each of these 
colors, and remember (hat the crocus-color and the purple 

' ipcfxvijv Aiylda Trdai. - 11. iv. IGG. 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 201 

were both of them developments, in opposite directions, 
of the great central idea of fire-color, or scarlet, you will 
see that this form of the creative spirit of the earth is con- 
ceived as robed in the blue, and purple, and scarlet, the 
white, and the gold, which have been recognized for the 5 
sacred chords of colors, from the day when the cloud 
descended on a Rock more mighty than Ida. 

96. I have spoken throughout, hitherto, of the concep- 
tion of Athena, as it is traceable in the Greek mind ; not 
as it was rendered by Greek art. It is matter of extreme 10 
difficulty, requiring a sympathy at once affectionate and 
cautious, and a knowledge reaching the earliest springs of 
the religion of many lands, to discern through the imper- 
fection, and, alas ! more dimly yet, through the triumphs, 
of formative art, what kind of thoughts they were that ap- 15 
pointed for it the tasks of its childhood, and watched by 
the awakening of its strength. 

The religious passion is nearly always vividest when 
the art is weakest ; and the technical skill only reaches its 
deliberate splendor when the ecstasy which gave it birth 20 
has passed away forever. ° It is as vain an attempt to 
reason out the visionary power or guiding influence of 
Athena in the Greek heart, from, anything we now read, 
or possess, of the work of Phidias, ° as it would be for the 
disciples of some new religion to infer the spirit of Chris- 25 
tianity from Titian's "Assumption." The effective vital- 
ity of the religious conception can be traced only through 
the efforts of trembling hands, and strange pleasures of 
untaught eyes ; and the beauty of the dream can no more 
be found in the first symbols by which it is expressed, than 30 
a child's idea of fairyland can be gathered from its pencil 
scrawl, or a girl's love for her broken doll explained by 
the defaced features. On the other band, the Athena of 



202 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

Phidias was, in very fact, not so much tho deity, as the 
darhng, of the Athenian people. Her magnificence repre- 
sented their pride and fondness, more than their piety ; 
and the great artist, in lavisliing upon her (hgnities which 
5 might be ended abru{)tly by the i)illage they provoked, 
resigned, ap{)arently without regret, the awe of her ancient 
memory ; and (with only the careless remonstrance of a 
workman too strong to be proud) even the perfectness of 
his own art. Rejoicing in the protection of their goddess, 

lo and in their own hour of glory, the people of Athena robed 
her, at their will, with the preciousness of ivory and gems ; 
forgot or denied the darkness of the breast i)late of judg- 
ment, and vainly bade its unappeasable serpents relax their 
coils in gold. 

IS 97. It will take me many a day yet — if days, many or 
few, are given me — to disentangle in anywise the proud 
and pract ised disguises of religious cnuMls from the instinc- 
tive arts which, grotesciucly and indecorously, yet with 
sincerity, strove to embody them, or to relate. But I 

2o think the reader, by help even of the imperfect indications 
already given to him, will be able to follow, with a continu- 
ally increasing security, the vestiges of the Myth of Athena ; 
and to reanimate its almost evanescent shade, by connect- 
ing it with the now recognized facts of existent nature 

25 which it, more or less dimly, reflected and foretold. I 
gather these facts together in brief sum. 

98. The deep of air that surrounds the earth enters into 
union with the earth at its surface, and with its waters, 
so as to be the apparent cause of their ascending into life. 

30 First, it warms them, and shades, at once, staying the heat 
of the sun's rays in its own body, but warding their force 
with its clouds. It warms and cools at once, with traffic 
of balm and frost ; so that the white wreaths are with- 



ATHENA IN THE EARTH 203 

drawn from the field of the Swiss peasant by the glow of 
Libyan ° rock. It gives its own strength to the sea ; forms 
and fills every cell of its foam; sustains the precipices, 
and designs the valleys of its waves ; gives the gleam to 
their moving under the night, and the white fire to their 5 
plains under sunrise; lifts their voices along the rocks, 
bears above them the spray of birds, pencils through them 
the dimpling of unfooted sands. It gathers out of them a 
portion in the hollow of its hand: dyes, with that, the 
hills into dark blue, and their glaciers with dying rose ; 10 
inlays with that, for sapphire, the dome in which it has to 
set the cloud ; shapes out of that the heavenly flocks : di- 
vides them, numbers, cherishes, bears them on its bosom, 
calls them to their journeys, waits by their rest ; feeds 
from them the brooks that cease not, and strews with them 15 
the dews that cease. It spins and weaves their fleece into 
wild tapestry, rends it, and renews ; and flits and flames, 
and whispers, among the golden threads, thrilling them 
with a plectrum ° of strange fire that traverses them to and 
fro, and is enclosed in them like life. 20 

It enters into the surface of the earth, subdues it, and 
falls together with it into fruitful, dust, from which can be 
moulded flesh ; it joins itself, in dew, to the substance of 
adamant, and becomes the green leaf out of the dry 
ground ; it enters into the separated shapes of the earth 25 
it has tempered, commands the ebb and flow of the current 
of their life, fills their limbs with its own lightness, meas- 
ures their existence by its indwelling pulse, moulds upon 
their lips the words by which one soul can be known to 
another ; is to them the hearing of the ear, and the beating 30 
of the heart ; and, passing away, leaves them to the peace 
that hears and moves no more. 

99. This was the Athena of the greatest people of the 



204 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

days of old. And opposite to the temple of this Spirit of 
the breath, and life-blood, of man and of beast, stood, 
on the Mount of Justice, and near the chasm which was 
haunted by the goddess-Avengers, an altar to a God un- 
5 known, ° — proclaimed at last to them, as one who, in- 
deed, gave to all men, life, and breath, and all things; 
and rain from heaven, filling their hearts with food and 
gladness ; a God who had made of one blood all nations of 
men who dwell on the face of all the earth, ° and had deter- 

lo mined the times of their fate, and the bounds of their 
habitation. 

100. We ourselves, fretted here in our narrow days, 
know less, perhaps, in very deed, than they, what manner 
of spirit w^e are of, or what manner of spirit we ignorantly 

15 worship. Have w^e, indeed, desired the Desire of all 
nations ? and will the Master whom we meant to seek, and 
the Messenger in whom we thought we delighted, confirm, 
when He comes to His temple, — or not find in its midst, — 
the tables heavy with gold for bread, and the seats that 

20 are bought wilh the price of the dove°? Or is our own 
land also to be left by its angered Spirit, — left among 
those, where sunshine vainly sweet, and passionate folly 
of storm, waste themselves in the silent places of knowledge 
that has passed away, and of tongues that have ceased? 

25 This only we may discern assuredly : this, every true light 
of science, every mercifully-granted power, every wisely- 
restricted thought, teach us more clearly day by day, that 
in the heavens above, and the earth beneath, there is one 
continual and omnipotent presence of help, and of peace, 

30 for all men who know that they live, and remember that 
they die. 



Ill 

ATHENA ERGANE ' 

(Athena in the Heart) 

VARIOUS NOTES RELATING TO THE CONCEPTION OF ATHENA 
AS THE DIRECTRESS OF THE IMAGINATION AND WILL 

101. I HAVE now only a few words to say, bearing on 
what seems to me present need, respecting the third 
function of Athena, conceived as the directress of human 
jDassion, resolution, and labor. 

Few words, for I am not yet prepared to give accurate s 
distinction between the intellectual rule of Athena and 
that of the Muses; but, broadly, the Muses, with their 
king, preside over meditative, historical, and poetic arts, 
whose end is the discovery of light or truth, and the crea- 
tion of beauty; but Athena rules over moral passion, and lo 
practically useful art. She does not make men learned, 
but prudent and subtle ; she does not teach them to make 
their work beautiful, but to make it right. 

In different places of my writings, and through many 
years of endeavor to define the laws of art, I have insisted 15 
on this right ness in work, and on its connection with 
virtue of character, in so many partial ways, that the 

^ "Athena the worker, or having rule over work." The name 
was first given to her by the Athenians. 

205 



206 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

impression left on the reader's mind — if, indeed, \t was 
ever impressed at all — has been confused and uncertain. 
In beginning the series of my corrected works, I wish this 
principle (in my own mind the foundation of every other) to 
S be made plain, if nothing else is ; and will try, therefore, to 
make it so, as far as, by any effort, I can put it into un- 
mistakable words. And, first, here is a very simple state- 
ment of it, given lately in a lecture on the Architecture 
of the Valley of the Somme,° which will be better read in 

lo this place than in its incidental connection with my account 
of the porches of Abbeville. 

102. I had used, in a preceding part of the lecture, the 
expression, "by what faults" this Gothic architecture fell. 
We continually speak thus of works of art. We talk of 

15 their faults and merits, as of virtues and vices. What do 
we mean by talking of the faults of a picture, or the merits 
of a piece of stone ? 

The faults of a work of art are the faults of its workman, 
and its virtues his virtues. ° 

20 Great art is the expression of the mind of a great man, 
and mean art, that of the want of mind of a weak man. A 
foolish person builds foolishly, and a wise one, sensibly° ; 
a virtuous one, beautifully ; and a vicious one, basely. 
If stone work is well put together, it means that a thought- 

25 ful man planned it, and a careful man cut it, and an honest 
man cemented it. If it has too much ornament, it means 
that its carver was too greedy of pleasure ; if too little, 
that he was rude, or insensitive, or stupid, and the like. 
So that when once you have learned how to spell these 

30 most precious of all legends, — pictures and buildings, — 
you may read the characters of men, and of nations, in 
their art, as in a mirror; nay, as in a microscope, and 
magnified a hundredfold; for the character becomes pas- 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 207 

sionate in the art, and intensifies itself in all its noblest or 
meanest delights. Nay, not only as in a microscope, but 
as under a scalpel, and in dissection ; for a man may hide 
himself from you, or misrepresent himself to you, every 
other way ; but he cannot in his work : there, be sure, you s 
have him to the inmost. All that he Hkes, all that he sees, 
— all that he can do, — his imagination, his affections, his 
perseverance, his impatience, his clumsiness, cleverness, 
everything is there. If the work is a cobweb, you know 
it was made by a spider ; if a honey-comb, by a bee ; a lo 
wormcast is thrown up by a worm, and a nest wreathed 
by a bird ; and a house built by a man, worthily, if he is 
worthy, and ignobly, if he is ignoble. 

And always, from the least to the greatest, as the made 
thing is good or bad, so is the maker of it. 15 

103. You all use this faculty of judgment more or less, 
whether you theoretically admit the principle or not. 
Take that floral gable ;^ you don't suppose the man who 
built Stonehenge° could have built that, or that the man 
who built that, would have built Stonehenge ? Do you 20 
think an old Roman would have Hked such a piece of 
filigree work? or that Michael Angelo° would have spent 
his time in twisting these stems of roses in and out? 
Or, of modern handicraftsmen, do you think a burglar, or 
a brute, or a pickpocket could have carved it ? Could 25 
Bill Sykes° have done it ? or the Dodger, dexterous with 
finger and tool? You will find in the end, that no man 
could have done it hut exactly the man who did it; and by 
looking close at it, you may, if you know your letters, read 
precisely the manner of man he was. 3° 

^ The elaborate pediment above the central porch at the west 
end of Rouen Cathedral," pierced into a transparent web of 
tracery, and enriched with a border of "twisted eglantine." 



208 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

104. Now I must insist on this matter, for a grave 
reason. Of all facts concerning art, this is the one most 
necessary to be known, that, while manufacture is the 
work of hands only, art is the work of the whole spirit of 

5 man ; and as that spirit is, so is the deed of it ; and by 
whatever power of vice or virtue any art is produced, 
the same vice or virtue it reproduces and teaches. That 
which is born of evil begets evil° ; and that which is born 
of valor and honor, teaches valor and honor. All art is 

TO either infection or education. It 7nust be one or other of 
these. 

105. This, I repeat, of all truths respecting art, is the one 
of which understanding is the most precious, and denial 
the most deadly. And I assert it the more, because it has 

15 of late been repeatedly, expressly, and with contumely, 
denied, and that by high authority ; and I hold it one of 
the most sorrowful facts connected with the decline of the 
arts among us, that English gentlemen, of high standing 
as scholars and artists, should have been blinded into the 

20 acceptance, and betrayed into the assertion, of a fallacy 
which only authority such as theirs could have rendered 
for an instant credible. For the contrary of it is written 
in the history of all great nations ; it is the one sentence 
always inscribed on the steps of their thrones ; the one con- 

25 cordant voice in which they speak to us out of their dust. 
All such nations first manifest themselves as a pure and 
beautiful animal race, with intense energy and imagina- 
tion. They live lives of hardship by choice, and by grand 
instinct of manly discipline ; they become fierce and ir- 

30 resistible soldiers ; the nation is always its own army, 
and their king, or chief head of government, is always their 
first soldier. Pharaoh, or David, or Leonidas, or Valerius, 
or Barbarossa, or Cceur de Lion, or St. Louis, or Dandolo, 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 209 

or Frederick the Great, — Egyptian, Jew, Greek, Roman, 
German, English, P'rench, Venetian," — that is inviolable 
law for them all; their king must be their first soldier, 
or they cannot be in progressive power. Then, after their 
great military period, comes the domestic period; ins 
which, without betraying the discipline of war, they add 
to their great soldiership the dehghts and possessions of a 
delicate and tender home-life ; and then, for all nations, is 
the time of their perfect art, which is the fruit, the evi- 
dence, the reward of their national ideal of character, lo 
developed by the finished care of the occupations of peace. 
That is the history of all true art that ever was, or can 
be ; palpably the history of it, — unmistakably, — written 
on the forehead of it in letters of light, in tongues of 
fire, by which the seal of virtue is branded as deep as ever 15 
iron burnt into a convict's flesh the seal of crime. But 
always, hitherto, after the great period, has followed the 
day of luxury, and pursuit of the arts for pleasure only. 
And all has so ended. 

106.° Thus far of Abbeville building. Now I have 20 
here asserted two things, — first, the foundation of art in 
moral character ; next, the foundation of moral character 
in war. I must make both these assertions clearer, and 
prove them. 

First, of the foundation of art in moral character. Of 25 
course art-gift and amiability of disposition are two differ- 
ent things; for a good man is not necessarily a painter, 
nor does an eye for color necessarily imply an honest mind. 
But great art implies the union of both powers ; it is the 
expression, by an art-gift, of a pure soul. If the gift is not 30 
there, we can have no art at all ; and if the soul — and a 
right soul too — is not there, the art is bad, however 
dexterous. 



210 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

107. But also, remember, that the art-gift itself is only 
the result of the moral character of generations. A bad 
woman may have a sweet voice ; but that sweetness of 
voice comes of the past morality of her race. That she 

5 can sing with it at all, she owes to the determination of laws 
of music by the morality of the past. Every act, every 
impulse, of virtue and vice, affects in any creature, face, 
voice, nervous power, and vigor and harmony of invention, 
at once. Perseverance in rightness of human conduct 

lo renders, after a certain number of generations, human art 
possible; every sin clouds it, be it ever so little a one; 
and persistent vicious living and following of pleasure 
render, after a certain number of generations, all art im- 
possible. Men are deceived by the long-suffering of the 

15 laws of nature, and mistake, in a nation, the reward of the 
virtue of its sires, for the issue of its own sins. The time 
of their visitation will come, and that inevitably ; for it is 
always true, that if the fathers have eaten sour grapes, 
the children's teeth are set on edge.° And for the indi- 

20 vidual, as soon as you have learned to read, you may, as I 
said, know him to the heart's core, through his art. Let 
his art-gift be never so great, and cultivated to the height 
by the schools of a great race of men, and it is still but a 
tapestry thrown over his own being and inner soul ; and 

25 the bearing of it will show, infallibly, whether it hangs on 
a man or on a skeleton. If you are dim-eyed, you may not 
see the difference in the fall of the folds at first, but learn 
how to look, and the folds themselves will become trans- 
parent, and you shall see through them the death's shape, 

30 or the divine one, making the tissue above it as a cloud of 
light, or as a winding-sheet. 

108. Then further, observe, I have said (and you will find 
it true, and that to the uttermost) that, as all lovely art is 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 211 

rooted in virtue, so it bears fruit of virtue, and is didactic 
in its own nature. It is often didactic also in actually ex- 
pressed thought, as Giotto's,° Michael Angelo's, Diirer's,° 
and hundreds more ; but that is not its special function ; 
it is didactic chiefly by being beautiful ; but beautiful with 5 
haunting thought, no less than with form, and full of 
myths that can be read only with the heart. 

For instance, at this moment there is open beside me 
as I write, a page of Persian manuscript, wrought with 
wreathed azure and gold, and soft green, and violet, and 10 
ruby and scarlet, into one field of pure resplendence. It is 
wrought to delight the eyes only ; and does delight them ; 
and the man who did it assuredly had eyes in his head ; 
but not much more. It is not didactic art, but its author 
was happy; and it will do the good, and the harm, that 15 
mere pleasure can do. But, opposite me, is an early 
Turner drawing of the lake of Geneva, taken about two 
miles from Geneva, on the Lausanne road, with Mont 
Blanc ° in the distance. The old city is seen lying beyond 
the waveless waters, veiled with a sweet misty veil of 20 
Athena's weaving ; a faint light of morning, peaceful ex- 
ceedingly, and almost colorless, shed from behind the Voi- 
rons,° increases into soft amber along the slope of the 
Saleve, and is just seen, and no more, on the fair warm 
fields of its summit, between the folds of a white cloud 25 
that rests upon the grass, but rises, high and tower-like, 
into the zenith of dawn above. 

109. There is not as much color in that low amber light 
upon the hill-side as there is in the palest dead leaf. The 
lake is not blue, but gray in mist, passing into deep shadow 30 
beneath the Voirons'° pines ; a few dark clusters of leaves, 
a single white flower, — scarcely seen, — are all the glad- 
ness given to the rocks of the shore. One of the ruby 



212 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

spots of the eastern manuscript would give color enough 
for all the red that is in Turner's entire drawing. For 
the mere pleasure of the eye, there is not so much in all 
those lines of his, throughout the entire landscape, as in 
5 half an inch square of the Persian's page. What made 
him take pleasure in the low color that is only like the 
brown of a dead leaf ? in the cold gray of dawn — in the 
one white flower among the rocks — in these — and no 
more than these ? 

lo 110. He took pleasure in them because he had been 
bred among English fields and hills ; because the gentleness 
of a great race was in his heart, and its powers of thought in 
his brain ; because he knew the stories of the Alps, and of 
the cities at their feet ; because he had read the Homeric 

15 legends of the clouds, and beheld the gods of dawn, and 
the givers of dew to the fields ; because he knew the faces 
of the crags, and the imagery of the passionate mountains, 
as a man knows the face of his friend ; because he had in 
him the wonder and sorrow concerning life and death, 

20 which are the inheritance of the Gothic soul from the days 
of its first sea kings°; and also the compassion and the 
joy that are woven into the innermost fabric of every 
great imaginative spirit, born now in countries that have 
lived by the Christian faith with any courage or truth. 

25 And the picture contains also, for us, just this which its 
maker had in him to give; and can convey it to us, just 
so far as we are of the temper in which it must be received. 
It is didactic if we are worthy to be taught, not otherwise. 
The pure heart it will make more pure° ; the thoughtful, 

30 more thoughtful. It has in it no words for the reckless or 
the base. 

111. As I myself look at it, there is no fault nor folly 
of my life — and both have been many and great — that 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 213 

does not rise up against me, and take away my joy, and 
shorten my power of possession of sight, of understanding. 
And every past effort of my hfe, every gleam of rightness 
or good in it, is with me now, to help me in my grasp of this 
art, and its vision. So far as I can rejoice in, or interpret 5 
either, my power is owing to what of right there is in me. 
I dare to say it, that, because through all my life I have 
desired good, and not evil; because I have been kind 
to many ; have wished to be kind to all ; have wilfully 
injured none; and because I have loved much, and 10 
not selfishly ; therefore, the morning light is yet visible 
to me on those hills, and you, who read, may trust my 
thought and word in such work as I have to do for you ; 
and you will be glad afterwards that you have trusted 
them. IS 

112. Yet, remember, — I repeat it again and yet again, 
— that I may for once, if possible, make this thing as- 
suredly clear : the inherited art-gift must be there, as well 
as the life in some poor measure, or rescued fragment, 
right. This art-gift of mine could not have been won by 20 
any work or by any conduct : it belongs to me by birthright, 
and came by Athena's will, from the air of English country 
villages, and Scottish hills. I will risk whatever charge 
of folly may come on me, for printing one of my many 
childish rhymes, written on a frosty day in Glen Farg, just 25 
north of Loch Leven. It bears date 1st January, 1828. 
I was born on the 8th of February, 1819 ; and all that I ever 
could be, and all that I cannot be, the weak little rhyme 
already shows. 

" Papa, how pretty those icicles are, 30 

That are seen so near, — that are seen so far; 
— Those dropping waters that come from the rocks 
And many a hole, like the haunt of a fox. 



214 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

That silvery stream that runs babbhng along, 

Making a murmuring, dancing song. 

Those trees that stand waving upon the rock's side, 

And men, that, like spectres, among them glide. 

And waterfalls that are heard from far, 

And come in sight when very near. 

And the water-wheel that turns slowly round. 

Grinding the corn that — requires to be ground, — 

(Political Economy of the future !) 

And mountains at a distance seen, 



And rivers winding through the plain. 
And quarries with their craggy stones, 
And the wind among them moans." 

So foretelling Stones of Venice, ° and this essay on Athena. 
IS Enough now concerning myself. 

113. Of Turner's life, and of its good and evil, both 
great, but the good immeasurably the greater, his work 
is in all things a perfect and transparent evidence. His 
biography is simply, "He did this, nor will ever another do 

20 its like again." Yet read what I have said of him, as 
compared with the great Italians, in the passages taken 
from the "Cestus of Aglaia," farther on, § 158, pp. 297, 
298. 

114. This, then, is the nature of the connection between 
25 morals with art. Now, secondly, I have asserted the 

foundation of both these, at least hitherto, in war. The 
reason of this too manifest fact is, that, until now, it has 
been impossible for any nation, except a warrior one, to 
fix its mind wholly on its men, instead of on their posses- 
30 sions. Every great soldier nation thinks, necessarily, . 
first of multiplying its bodies and souls of men, in good 
temper and strict discipline. As long as this is its political 
aim, it does not matter what it temporarily suffers, or loses, 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 215 

either in numbers or in wealth ; its morahty and its arts 
(if it have national art-gift) advance together; but so 
soon as it ceases to be a warrior nation, it thinks of its 
possessions instead of its men; and then the moral and 
poetic powers vanish together. 5 

115. It is thus, however, absolutely necessary to the 
virtue of war that it should be waged by personal strength, 
not by money or machinery. A nation that fights with 
a mercenary force, or with torpedoes instead of its own 
arms, is dying. Not but that there is more true courage in lo 
modern than even in ancient war; but this is, first, be- 
cause all the remaining life of European nations is with a 
morbid intensity thrown into their soldiers ; and, secondly, 
because their present heroism is the culmination of centu- 
ries of inbred and traditional valor, which Athena taught 15 
them by forcing them to govern the foam of the sea-wave 
and of the horse, — not the steam of kettles. 

116. And further, note this, which is vital to us in the 
present crisis : If war is to be made by money and ma- 
chinery, the nation which is the largest and most covetous 20 
multitude will win. You may be as scientific as you 
choose ; the mob that can pay more for sulphuric acid and 
gunpowder will at last poison its bullets, throw acid in your 
faces, and make an end of you ; of itself, also, in good time, 
but of you first. And to the English people the choice of 25 
its fate is very near now. It may spasmodically defend 
its property with iron walls a fathom thick, a few years 
longer — a very few. No walls will defend either it, or its 
havings, against the multitude that is breeding and spread- 
ing, faster than the clouds, over the habitable earth. We 30 
shall be allowed to live by small pedler's business, and iron- 
mongery — since we have chosen those for our line of life 
— as long as we are found useful black servants to the 



216 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

Americans, ° and are content to dig coals and sit in the 
cinders ; and have still coals to dig, — they once ex- 
hausted, or got cheaper elsewhere, we shall be abolished. 
But if we think more wisely, while there is yet time, and set 
S our minds again on multiplying Englishmen, and not on 
cheapening English wares; if we resolve to submit to 
wholesome laws of labor and economy, and, setting our 
political squabbles aside, try how many strong creatures, 
friendly and faithful to each other, we can crowd into every 

lo spot of English dominion, neither poison nor iron will 

prevail against us ; nor traffic, nor hatred ; the noble 

nation will yet, by the grace of Heaven, rule over the 

ignoble, ° and force of heart hold its own against fire-balls. ° 

117. But there is yet a further reason for the dependence 

15 of the arts on war. The vice and injustice of the world 
are constantly springing anew, and are only to be sub- 
dued by battle ; the keepers of order and law must always 
be soldiers. And now, going back to the myth of Athena, 
we see that though she is first a warrior maid, she detests 

20 war for its own sake ; she arms Achilles and Ulysses in just 
quarrels, but she c^z'sarms Ares. She contends, herself, 
continually against disorder and convulsion, in the earth 
giants; she stands by Hercules' side in victory over all 
monstrous evil ; in justice only she judges and makes war.° 

25 But in this war of hers she is wholly implacable. She 
has little notion of converting criminals. There is 
no faculty of mercy in her w^hen she has been resisted. 
Her word is only, "I will mock when your fear cometh." 
Note the words that follow: "when your fear cometh as 

30 desolation, and your destruction as a whirlwind°;" for 
her wrath is of irresistible tempest : once roused, it is blind 
and deaf — rabies — madness of anger — darkness of the 
Dies Irae.° 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 217 

And that is, indeed, the sorrowfullest fact we have to 
know about our own several Hves. Wisdom never for- 
gives. Whatever resistance we have offered to her law, 
she avenges forever ; the lost hour can never be redeemed, 
and the accomplished wrong never atoned for. The best 5 
that can be done afterwards, but for that, had been better ; 
the falsest of all the cries of peace, where there is no peace, ° 
is that of the pardon of sin, as the mob expect it. Wisdom 
can ''put away" sin, but she cannot pardon it; and she 
is apt, in her haste, to put away the sinner as well, when 10 
the black tpgis is on her breast. 

118. And this is also a fact we have to know about our 
national life, that it is ended as soon as it has lost the power 
of noble Anger. Wlien it paints over, and apologizes for 
its pitiful criminalities ; and endures its false weights, and 15 
its adulterated food ; dares not to decide practically be- 
tween good and evil, and can neither honor the one, nor 
smite the other, but sneers at th6 good, as if it were hidden 
evil, and consoles the evil with pious sympathy, and con- 
serves it in the sugar of its leaden heart, — the end is 20 
come. 

119. The first sign, then, of Athena's presence with 
any people is that they become warriors, and that the 
chief thought of every man of them is to stand rightly in 
his rank, and not fail from his brother's side in battle. 25 
Wealth, and pleasure, and even love, are all, under Athe- 
na's orders, sacrificed to this duty of standing fast in 
the rank of war. 

But further : Athena presides over industry, as well as 
battle; typically, over women's industry; that brings 30 
comfort with pleasantness. Her word to us all is : "Be 
well exercised, and rightly clothed. Clothed, and in your 
right minds°; not insane and in rags, nor in soiled fine 



218 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

clothes clutched from each other's shoulders. Fight and 
weave. Then I myself will answer for the course of the 
lance and the colors of the loom.'' 

And now I will ask the reader to look with some care 

5 through these following passages respecting modern mul- 
titudes and their occupations, written long ago, but left in 
fragmentary form, in which they must now stay, and be 
of what use they can. 

120. It is not political economy to put a number of strong 

lo men down on an acre of ground, with no lodging, and noth- 
ing to eat. Nor is it political economy to build a city on 
good ground, and fill it with store of corn and treasure, and 
put a score of lepers to live in it. Political economy cre- 
ates together the means of life, and the living persons 

15 who are to use them ; and of both, the best and the most 
that it can, but imperatively the best, not the most. A 
few good and healthy men, rather than a multitude of 
diseased rogues ; and a little real milk and wine rather than 
much chalk and petroleum ; but the gist of the whole busi- 

20 ness is that the men and their property must both be pro- 
duced together — not one to the loss of the other. Prop- 
erty must not be created in lands desolate by exile of their 
people, nor multiplied and depraved humanity in lands 
barren of bread. 

25 121. Nevertheless, though the men and their possessions 
are to be increased at the same time, the first object of 
thought is always to be the multiplication of a worthy 
people. The strength of the nation is in its multitude, not 
in its territory ; but only in its sound multitude. It is one 

30 thing, both in a man and a nation, to gain flesh, and an- 
other to be swollen with putrid humors. Not that multi- 
tude ever ought to be inconsistent with virtue. Two men 
should be wiser than one, and two thousand than two; 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 219 

nor do I know another so gross fallacy in the records of 
human stupidity as that excuse for neglect of crime by 
greatness of cities. As if the first purpose of congregation 
were not to devise laws and repress crimes ! As if bees 
and wasps could hve honestly in flocks, — men, only in s 
separate dens ! As if it were easy to help one another on 
the opposite sides of a mountain, and impossible on the 
opposite sides of a street ! But when the men are true 
and good, and stand shoulder to shoulder, the strength 
of any nation is in its quantity of life, not in its land nor lo 
gold. The more good men a state has, in proportion to its 
territory, the stronger the state. And as it has been the 
madness of economists to seek for gold instead of hfe, so 
it has been the madness of kings to seek for land instead 
of life. They want the town on the other side of the river, 15 
and seek it at the spear point ; it never enters their stupid 
heads that to double the honest souls in the town on this 
side of the river would make them stronger kings° ; and 
that this doubling might be done by the ploughshare 
instead of the spear, and through happiness instead of 20 
misery. 

Therefore, in brief, this is the object of all true policy 
and true economy: "utmost multitude of good men on 
every given space of ground " — imperatively always 
good, sound, honest men, — not a mob of white-faced 25 
thieves. So that, on the one hand all aristocracy is wrong 
which is inconsistent with numbers ; and on the other all 
numbers are wrong which are inconsistent with breeding. 

122. Then, touching the accumulation of wealth for the 
maintenance of such men, observe, that you must never 30 
use the terms "money" and "wealth" as synonymous. 
Wealth consists of the good, and therefore useful, things 
in the possession of the nation ; money is only the written 



220 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

or coined sign of the relative quantities of wealth in each 
person's possession. All money is a divisible title-deed, of 
immense importance as an expression of right to property, 
but absolutely valueless as property itself. Thus, supposing 
5 a nation isolated from all others, the money in its posses- 
sion is, at its maximum value, worth all the property of the 
nation, and no more, because no more can be got for it. 
And the money of all nations is worth, at its maximum, 
the property of all nations, and no more, for no more can 

lo be got for it. Thus, every article of property produced 
increases, by its value, the value of all the money in the 
world, and every article of property destroyed, diminishes 
the value of all the money in the world. If ten men are 
cast away on a rock, with a thousand pounds in their 

IS pockets, and there is on the rock neither food nor shelter, 
their money is worth simply nothing, for nothing is to be 
had for it. If they build ten huts, and recover a cask 
of biscuit from the wreck, then their thousand pounds, 
at its maximum value, is worth ten huts and a cask of 

20 biscuit. If they make their thousand pounds into two 
thousand by writing new notes, their two thousand pounds 
are still worth ten huts and a cask of biscuit. And the law 
of relative value is the same for all the world, and all the 
people in it, and all their property, as for ten men on a 

25 rock. Therefore, money is truly and finally lost in the 
degree in which its value is taken from it (ceasing in that 
degree to be money at all) ; and it is truly gained in the 
degree in w^hich value is added to it. Thus, suppose the 
money coined by the nation be a fixed sum, divided very 

30 minutely (say into francs and cents), and neither to be 
added to nor diminished. Then every grain of food and 
inch of lodging added to its possessions makes every cent 
in its pockets worth proportionally more, and every grain 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 221 

of food it consumes, and inch of roof it allows to fall to 
ruin, makes every cent in its pockets worth less ; and this 
with mathematical precision. The immediate value of 
the money at particular times and places depends, indeed, 
on the humors of the possessors of property ; but the 5 
nation is in the one case gradually getting richer, and will 
feel the pressure of poverty steadily everywhere relaxing, 
whatever the humors of individuals may be ; and, in the 
other case, is gradually growing poorer, and the pressure 
of its poverty will every day tell more and more, in ways 10 
that it cannot explain, but will most bitterly feel. 

123. The actual quantity of money which it coins, in 
relation to its real property, is therefore only of conse- 
quence for convenience of exchange; but the proportion 
in which this quantity of money is divided among in- 15 
dividuals expresses their various rights to greater or less 
proportions of the national property, and must not, there- 
fore, be tampered wuth. The government may at any 
time, with perfect justice, double its issue of coinage, if it 
gives every man who had ten pounds in his pocket another 20 
ten pounds, and every man who had ten pence another 
ten pence ; for it thus does not make any of them richer ; 
it merely divides their counters for them into twice the 
number. But if it gives the newly-issued coins to other 
people, or keeps them itself, it simply robs the former 25 
holders to precisely that extent. This most important 
function of money, as a title-deed, on the non-violation of 
which all national soundness of commerce and peace of life 
depend, has been never rightly distinguished by econo- 
mists from the quite unimportant function of money as a 30 
means of exchange. You can exchange goods — at some in- 
convenience, indeed, but still you can contrive to do it — 
without money at all ; but you cannot maintain your claim 



222 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

to the savings of your past life without a document declar- 
ing the amount of them, which the nation and its govern- 
ment will respect. 

124. And as economists have lost sight of this great 
S function of money in relation to individual rights, so they 

have equally lost sight of its function as a representative 
of good things. That, for every good thing produced, so 
much money is put into everybody's pocket, is the one 
simple and primal truth for the public to know, and for 

lo economists to teach. How many of them have taught it ? 
Some have ; but only incidentally ; and others will say 
it is a truism. ° If it be, do the public know it? Does 
your ordinary English householder know that every costly 
dinner he gives has destroyed forever as much money as it 

15 is worth? Does every well-educated girl ^ — do even the 
women in high political position — know that every fine 
dress they wear themselves, or cause to be worn, destroys 
precisely so much of the national money as the labor and 
material of it are worth ? If this be a truism, it is one that 

20 needs proclaiming somewhat louder. 

125. That, then, is the relation of money and goods. 
So much goods, so much money ; so little goods, so little 
money. But, as there is this true relation between money 
and "goods,'' or good things, so there is a false relation 

25 between money and "bads," or bad things. Many bad 
things will fetch a price in exchange ; but they do not in- 
crease the wealth of the country. Good wine is wealth, 
drugged wine is not ; good meat is wealth, putrid meat is 
not; good pictures are wealth, bad pictures are not. 

30 A thing is worth precisely what it can do for you ; not 
what you choose to pay for it. You may pay a thousand 
pounds for a cracked pipkin, if you please; but you do 
not by that transaction make the cracked pipkin worth 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 223 

one that will hold water, nor that, nor any pipkin what- 
soever, worth more than it was before you paid such sum 
for it. You may, perhaps, induce many potters to manu- 
facture fissured pots, and many amateurs of clay to buy 
them; but the nation is, through the whole business so 5 
encouraged, rich by the addition to its wealth of so many 
potsherds — and there an end. The thing is worth what 
it CAN dp for you, not what you think it can ; and most 
national luxuries, now-a-days, are a form of potsherd, 
provided for the solace of a self-complacent Job, voluntary 10 
sedent on his ash-heap. ° 

126. And, also, so far as good things already exist, and 
have become media of exchange, the variations in their 
prices are absolutely indifferent to the nation. Whether 
Mr. A. buys a Titian from Mr. B. for twenty, or for two 15 
thousand, pounds, matters not sixpence to the national 
revenue ; that is to say, it matters in nowise to the revenue 
whether Mr. A., has the picture, and Mr. B. the money, or 
Mr. B. the picture, and Mr. A. the money. Which of them 
will spend the money most wisely, and which of them will 20 
keep the picture most carefully, is, indeed, a matter of 
some importance ; but this cannot be known by the mere 
fact of exchange. 

127. The wealth of a nation then, first, and its peace 
and well-being besides, depend on the number of persons it 25 
can employ in making good and useful things. I say its 
well-being also, for the character of men depends more on 
their occupations than on any teaching we can give them, 
or principles with which we can imbue them. The em- 
ployment forms the habits of body and mind, and these 30 
are the constitution of the man, — the greater part of his 
moral or persistent nature, whatever effort, under special 
excitement, he may make to change or overcome them. 



224 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

Employment is the half, and the primal half, of education 
— it is the warp of it ; and the fineness or the endurance of 
all subsequently woven pattern depends wholly on its 
straightness and strength. And, whatever difficulty there 
5 may be in tracing through past history the remoter con- 
nections of event and cause, one chain of sequence is always 
clear: the formation, namely, of the character of nations 
by their employments, and the determination of their final 
fate by their character. The moment, and the first direc- 

lo tion of decisive revolutions, often depend on accident ; 
but their persistent course, and their consequences, depend 
wholly on the nature of the people. The passing of the 
Reform Bill by the late English Parliament may have been 
more or less accidental ; the results of the measure now 

15 rest on the character of the English people, as it has been 
developed by their recent interests, occupations, and habits 
of life. Whether, as a body, they employ their new powers 
for good or evil will depend, not on their facilities of knowl- 
edge, nor even on the general intelligence they may possess, 

20 but on the number of persons among them whom whole- 
some employments have rendered famifiar with the duties, 
and modest in their estimate of the promises, of life. 

128. But especially in framing laws respecting the 
treatment or employment of improvident and more or less 

25 vicious persons, it is to be remembered that as men are not 
made heroes by the performance of an act of heroism, but 
must be brave before they can perform it, so they are not 
made villains by the commission of a crime, but were vil- 
lains before they committed it ; and the right of public 

30 interference with their conduct begins when they begin to 
corrupt themselves, — not merely at the moment when 
they have proved themselves hopelessly corrupt. 

All measures of reformation are effective in exact pro- 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 225 

portion to their timeliness : partial decay may be cut 
away and cleansed ; incipient error corrected ; but there 
is a point at which corruption can no more be staj^ed, nor 
wandering recalled. It has been the manner of modern 
philanthropy to remain passive until that precise period, 5 
and to leave the sick to perish, and the foolish to stray, 
while it spent itself in frantic exertions to raise the dead 
and reform the dust. 

The recent direction of a great weight of public opinion 
against capital punishment is, I trust, the sign of an 10 
awakening perception that punishment is the last and 
worst instrument in the hands of the legislator for the pre- 
vention of crime. The true instruments of reformation 
are employment and reward ; not punishment. Aid the 
willing, honor the virtuous, and compel the idle into occu- 15 
pation, and there will be no need for the compelling of any 
into the great and last indolence of death. 

129. The beginning of all true reformation among the 
criminal classes depends on the establishment of institu- 
tions for their active employment, while their criminality 20 
is still unripe, and their feelings of self-respect, capacities 
of affection, and sense of justice, not altogether quenched. 
That those who are desirous of employment should always 
be able to find it, will hardly, at the present day, be dis- 
puted ; but that those who are undesirous of employment 25 
should of all persons be the most strictly compelled to it, 
the public are hardly yet convinced ; and they must be 
convinced. If the danger of the principal thoroughfares 
in their capital city, and the multipUcation of crimes more 
ghastly than ever yet disgraced a nominal civilization, are 30 
not enough, they will not have to wait long before they 
receive sterner lessons. For our neglect of the lower orders 
has reached a point at which it begins to bear its necessary 



226 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

fruit, and every day makes the fields, not whiter, but more 
sable, to harvest. 

130. The general principles by which employment 
should be regulated may be briefly stated as follows : 
5 1. There being three great classes of mechanical pow- 
ers at our disposal, namely, (a) vital or muscular power ; 
(6) natural mechanical power of wind, water, and electric- 
ity ; and (c) artificially produced mechanical power ; it is the 
first principle of economy to use all available vital power 

lo first, then the inexpensive natural forces, and only at last 
to have recourse to artificial power. And this because it 
is always better for a man to work with his own hands to 
feed and clothe himself, than to stand idle while a machine 
works for him ; and if he cannot by all the labor healthily 

15 possible to him feed and clothe himself, then it is better 
to use an inexpensive machine — as a windmill or water- 
mill — than a costly one like a steam-engine, so long as we 
have natural force enough at our disposal. Whereas at 
present we continually hear economists regret that the 

20 water-power of the cascades or streams of a country 
should be lost, but hardly ever that the muscular power 
of its idle inhabitants should be lost ; and, again, we see 
vast districts, as the south of Provence, ° where a strong 
wind^ blows steadily all day long for six days out of seven 

25 throughout the year, without a windmill, while men are 
continually employed a hundred miles to the north, in 
digging fuel to obtain artificial power. But the principal 
point of all to be kept in view is, that in every idle arm and 
shoulder throughout the country there is a certain quan- 

30 tity of force, equivalent to the force of so much fuel ; and 

' In order fully to utilize this natural power, we only require 
machinery to turn the variable into a constant velocity — no in- 
surmountable difficulty. 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 227 

that it is mere insane waste to dig for coal for our force, 
while the vital force is unused, and not onl}^ unused, but in 
being so, corrupting and polluting itself. We waste our 
coal, and spoil our humanity at one and the same instant. 
Therefore, wherever there is an idle arm, always save coal 5 
with it, and the stores of England will last all the longer. 
And precisely the same argument answers the common 
one about "taking employment out of the hands of the 
industrious laborer." Why, what is "employment" but 
the putting out of vital force instead of mechanical force ? 10 
We are continually in search of means of strength to pull, to 
hammer, to fetch, to carry. We waste our future resources 
to get this strength, while we leave all the living fuel to 
burn itself out in mere pestiferous breath, and production 
of its variously noisome forms of ashes ! Clearly, if we 15 
want fire for force, we want men for force first. The in- 
dustrious hands must already have so much to do that they 
can do no more, or else we need not use machines to help 
them. Then use the idle hands first. Instead of dragging 
petroleum with a steam-engine, put it on a canal, and 20 
drag it with human arms and shoulders. Petroleum can- 
not possibly be in a hurry to arrive anywhere. ° We can 
always order that, and many other things, time enough 
before we want it. So, the carriage of everything which 
does not spoil by keeping may most wholesomely and 25 
safely be done by water-traction and sailing-vessels ; and 
no healthier work can men be put to, no better discipline, 
than such active porterage. 

131. (2d.) In employing all the muscular power at our 
disposal we are to make the employments we choose as 30 
educational as possible ; for a wholesome human employ- 
ment is the first and best method of education, mental as 
well as bodily. ° A man taught to plough, row, or steer 



228 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

well, and a woman taught to cook properly, and make 
a dress neatly, are already educated in many essential 
moral habits. Labor considered as a discipline has 
hitherto been thought of only for criminals; but the real 

5 and noblest function of labor is to prevent crime, and not 
to be /Reformatory, but Formatory. 

132. The third great principle of employment is, that 
whenever there is pressure of poverty to be met, all 
enforced occupation should be directed to the production 

lo of useful articles only ; that is to say, of food, of simple 
clothing, of lodging, or of the means of conveying, dis- 
tributing, and preserving these. It is yet little under- 
stood by economists, and not at all by the public, that the 
employment of persons in a useless business cannot relieve 

15 ultimate distress. The money given to employ riband- 
makers° at Coventry is merely so much money withdrawn 
from what would have employed lace-makers at Honiton ; 
or makers of something else, as useless, elsewhere. We 
must spend our money in some way, at some time, and it 

20 cannot at any time be spent without employing some- 
body. If we gamble it away, the person who wins it 
must spend it ; if we lose it in a railroad speculation, it has 
gone into some one else's pockets, or merely gone to pay 
navvies° for making a useless embankment, instead of to 

25 pay riband or button makers for making useless ribands 
or buttons ; we cannot lose it (unless by actually destroy- 
ing it) without giving employment of some kind ; and, 
therefore, whatever quantity of money exists, the relative 
quantity of employment must some day come out of it; 

30 but the distress of the nation signifies that the employ- 
ments given have produced nothing that will support its 
existence. Men cannot live on ribands, or buttons, or 
velvet, or by going quickly from place to place ; and every 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 229 

coin spent in useless ornament, or useless motion, is so 
much withdrawn from the national means of hfe. One 
of the most beautiful uses of railroads is to enable A to 
travel from the town of X to take away the business of B 
in the town of Y ; while, in the meantime, B travels from 5 
the town of Y to take away A's business in the town of X. 
But the national wealth is not increased by these opera- 
tions. Whereas every coin spent in cultivating ground, in 
repairing lodging, in making necessary and good roads, in 
preventing danger by sea or land, and in carriage of food 10 
or fuel where they are required, is so much absolute and 
direct gain to the whole nation. To cultivate land round 
Coventry makes hving easier at Honiton, and every acre of 
sand gained from the sea in Lincolnshire makes life easier 
all over England. 15 

4th, and lastly. Since for every idle person some one 
else must be working somewhere to provide him with 
clothes and food, and doing, therefore, double the quantity 
of work that would be enough for his own needs, it is only a 
matter of pure justice to compel the idle person to work for 20 
his maintenance himself. The conscription has been used 
in many countries to take away laborers who supported 
their families, from their useful work, and maintain them 
for purposes chiefly of military display at the public 
expense. Since this has been long endured by the most 25 
civilized nations, let it not be thought they would not 
much more gladly endure a conscription which should seize 
only the vicious and idle, already living by criminal pro- 
cedures at the public expense ; and which should discipline 
and educate them to labor which would not only maintain 30 
themselves, but be serviceable to the commonwealth. The 
question is simply this : we must feed the drunkard, vaga- 
bond, and thief ; but shall we do so by letting them steal 



230 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

their food, and do no work for it ? or shall we give them their 
food in appointed quantity, and enforce their doing work 
which shall be worth it, and which, in process of time, will 
redeem their own characters and make them happy and 
5 serviceable members of society ? 

I find by me a violent little fragment of undelivered 
lecture, which puts this, perhaps, still more clearly. 
Your idle people (it says), as they are now, are not 
merely waste coal-beds. They are explosive coal-beds, 

lo which you pay a high annual rent for. You are keep- 
ing all these idle persons, remember, at far greater cost 
than if they were busy. Do you think a vicious person 
eats less than an honest one ? or that it is cheaper to keep 
a bad man drunk, than a good man sober? There is, I 

IS suppose, a dim idea in the mind of the public, that they 
don't pay for the maintenance of people they don't em- 
ploy. Those staggering rascals at the street corner, 
grouped around its splendid angle of public-house, we fancy 
that they are no servants of ours ! that we pay them no 

20 wages ! that no cash out of our pockets is spent over that 
beer-stained counter ! 

Whose cash is it then they are spending ? It is not got 
honestly by w^ork. You know that much. Where do 
they get it from ? Who has paid for their dinner and their 

25 pot ? Those fellows can only live in one of two ways — 
by pillage or beggary. Their annual income by thieving 
comes out of the public pocket, you will admit. They are 
not cheaply fed, so far as they are fed by theft. But the 
rest of their Hving — all that they. don't steal — they 

30 must beg. Not with success from you, you think. Wise,, 
as benevolent, you never gave a penny in "indiscriminate 
charity." Well, I congratulate you on the freedom of your 
conscience from that sin, mine being bitterly burdened 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 231 

with the memory of many a sixpence given to beggars of 
whom I knew nothing but that they had pale faces and 
thin waists. But it is not that kind of street beggary that 
the vagabonds of our people chiefly practise. It is home 
beggary that is the worst beggars' trade. Home alms 5 
which it is their worst degradation to receive. Those 
scamps know well enough that you and your wisdom are 
worth nothing to them. They won't beg of you. They 
will beg of their sisters, and mothers, and wives, and 
children, and of any one else who is enough ashamed of 10 
being of the same blood with them to pay to keep them 
out of sight. Every one of those blackguards is the bane 
of a family. That is the deadly " indiscriminate charity " 
— the charity which each household pays to maintain its 
own private curse. 15 

133. And you think that is no affair of yours? and 
that every family ought to watch over and subdue 
its own living plague? Put it to yourselves this way, 
then : suppose you knew every one of those families 
kept an idol in an inner room — a big-bellied bronze 20 
figure, to which daily sacrifice and oblation was made; 
at whose feet so much beer and brandy was poured out 
every morning on the ground ; and before which, every 
night, good meat, enough for two men's keep, was set, and 
left, till it was putrid, and then carried out and thrown 25 
on the dunghill; you would put an end to that form 
of idolatry with your best diligence, I suppose. You 
would understand then that the beer, and brandy, and 
meat, were wasted ; and that the burden imposed by each 
household on itself lay heavily through them on the whole 30 
community ? But, suppose further, that this idol were not 
of silent and quiet bronze only, but an ingenious mechan- 
ism, wound up every morning, to run itself down in auto- 



232 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

matic blasphemies ; that it struck and tore with its hands 

the people who set food before it ; that it was anointed 

with poisonous unguents, ° and infected the air for miles 

round. You would interfere with the idolatry then, 
5 straightway ? Will you not interfere with it now, when 

the infection that the venomous idol spreads is not merely 

death, but sin ? 

134. So far the old lecture. Returning to cool English, ° 

the end of the matter is, that, sooner or later, we shall have 
lo to register our people ; and to know how they hve ; and to 

make sure, if they are capable of work, that right work is 

given them to do. 

The different classes of work for which bodies of men 

could be consistently organized, might ultimately become 
15 numerous ; these following divisions of occupation may at 

once be suggested : — 

1. Road-making. — Good roads to be made, wherever 
needed, and kept in repair ; and the annual loss on unfre- 
quented roads, in spoiled horses, strained wheels, and time, 

20 done away with. 

2. Bringing in of waste land. — All waste lands not nec- 
essary for public health, to be made accessible and gradu- 
ally reclaimed ; chiefly our wide and waste seashores. Not 
our mountains nor moorland. Our life depends on them, 

25 more than on the best arable we have. 

3. Harbor-making. — The deficiencies of safe or con- 
venient harborage in our smaller ports to be remedied ; 
other harbors built at dangerous points of coast, and a 
disciplined body of men always kept in connection with 

30 the pilot and life-boat services. There is room for every 
order of intelligence in this work, and for a large body of 
superior officers. 

4. Porterage. — All heavy goods, not requiring speed in 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 233 

transit, to be carried (under preventive duty on transit 
by railroad) by canal-boats, employing men for draught ; 
and the merchant-shipping service extended by sea ; so 
that no ships may be wrecked for want of hands, while 
there are idle ones in mischief on shore. 5 

5. Repair of buildings. — A body of men in various 
trades to be kept at the disposal of the authorities in every 
large town, for repair of buildings, especially the houses of 
the poorer orders, who, if no such provisions were made, 
could not employ workmen on their own houses, but would to 
simply live with rent walls and roofs. 

6. Dressmaking. — Substantial dress, of standard ma- 
terial and kind, strong shoes, and stout bedding, to be 
manufactured for the poor, so as to render it unnecessary 
for them, unless by extremity of improA'idence, to wear 15 
cast clothes, or be without sufficiency of clothing. 

7. Works of art. — Schools to be established on thor- 
oughly sound principles of manufacture, and use of materials, 
and with sample and, for given periods, unalterable modes 
of work ; first, in pottery, and embracing gradually metal 20 
work, sculpture, and decorative painting ; the two points 
insisted upon, in distinction from ordinary commercial 
estabhshments, being perfectness of materials to the ut- 
most attainable degree ; and the production of everything 
by hand-work, for the special purpose of developing per- 25 
sonal power and skill in the workman. 

The last two departments, and some subordinate 
branches of others, would include the service of women 
and children. 

I give now, for such further illustration as they contain 3c 
of the points I desire most to insist upon with respect 
both to education and employment, a portion of the 
series of notes published some time ago in the ''Art 



234 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

Journal," on the opposition of Modesty and Liberty, and 
the unescapable law of wise restraint. I am sorry that 
they are written obscurely — and it may be thought 
affectedly ; but the fact is, I have always had three differ- 
5 ent ways of writing" : one, with the single view of making 
myself understood, in which I necessarily omit a great deal 
of what comes into my head ; another, in which I say , 
what I think ought to be said, in what I suppose to be the 
best words I can find for it (which is in reality an affected 

lo style — be it good or bad) ; and my third way of writing 
is to say all that comes into my head for my own pleasure, 
in the first words that come, retouching them afterwards 
into (approximate) grammar. These notes for the ''Art 
Journal'' were so written; and I hke them myself, of 

15 course ; but ask the reader's pardon for their confusedness. 

135. "Sir, it cannot be better done." 

We will insist, with the reader's permission, on this 

comfortful saying of Albert Durer's° in order to find out, if 

we may, what Modesty is ; which it will be well for paint- 

20 ters, readers, and especially critics, to know, before going 
farther. What it is; or, rather, who she is, her fingers 
being among the deftest in laying the ground-threads of 
Aglaia's cestus.° 

For this same opinion of Albert's is entertained by many 

25 other people respecting their own doings° — a very preva- 
lent opinion, indeed, I find it ; and the answer itself, 
though rarely made with the Nuremberger's crushing de- 
cision, is nevertheless often enough intimated, with deli- 
cacy, by artists of all countries, in their various dialects. 

30 Neither can it always be held an entirely modest one, as it 
assuredly was in the man who would sometimes estimate 
a piece of his unconquerable work at only the worth of a 
plate of fruit, or a flask of wine — would have taken even 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 235 

one "fig for it," kindly offered; or given it royally for 
nothing, to show his hand to a fellow-king of his own, or 
any other craft — as Gainsborough ° gave the " Boy at 
the Stile " for a solo on the violin. An entirely modest 
saying, I repeat, in him — not always in us. For Modesty 5 
is "the measuring virtue," the virtue of modes or limits. 
She is, indeed, said to be only the third or youngest of the 
children of the cardinal virtue, Temperance ; and apt to be 
despised, being more given to arithmetic, and other vulgar 
studies (Cinderella°-like), than her elder sisters ; but she is .u 
useful in the household, and arrives at great results with her 
yard-measure and slate-pencil — a pretty little Marchande 
des Modes, ° cutting her dress always according to the silk 
(if this be the proper feminine reading of "coat according 
to the cloth"), so that, consulting with her carefully of a 15 
miorning, men get to know not only their income, but their 
inbeing — to know themselves, that is, in a ganger's man- 
ner, round, and up and down — surface and contents ; 
what is in them, and what may be got out of them and, 
in fine, their entire canon of weight and capacity. That 20 
yard-measure of Modesty's, lent to those who will use it, 
is a curious musical reed, and will go round and round 
waists that are slender enough, with latent melody in 
every joint of it, the dark root only being soundless, moist 
from the wave wherein 25 

" Null' altra pianta che facesse f ronda 

O che 'n durasse, vi puote aver vita."*'^ 

But when the little sister herself takes it in hand, to 
measure things outside of us with, the joints shoot out in 
an amazing manner : the four-square walls even of celestial 3° 
cities being measurable enough by that reed° ; and the 

1 "Purgatorio," i. 108, 109. . 



236 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

way pointed to them, though only to be followed, or even 
seen, in the dim starlight shed down fronl worlds amidst 
which there is no name of Measure any more, though the 
reality of it always. For, indeed, to all true modesty the 
5 necessary business is not inlook, but outlook, and espe- 
cially wplook : it is only her sister Shamefacedness, who is 

* known by the drooping lashes — Modesty, quite other- 
wise, by her large eyes full of wonder ; for she never con- 
temns herself, nor is ashamed of herself, but forgets 

lo herself — at least until she has done something worth 
memory. It is easy to peep and potter about one's own 
deficiencies in a quiet immodest discontent ; but Modesty 
is so pleased with other people's doings, that she has no 
leisure to lament her own: and thus, knowing the fresh 

15 feeling of contentment, unstained with thought of self, 
she does not fear being pleased, when there is cause, with 
her own rightness, as with another's, saying calmly, " Be 
it mine, or yours, or whose else's it may, it is no matter; 
this also is well." But the right to say such a thing de- 

20 pends on continual reverence, and manifold sense of 
failure. If you have known yourself to have failed, you 
may trust, when it comes, the strange consciousness of 
success ; if you have faithfully loved the noble work of 
others, you need not fear to speak with respect of things 

25 duly done, of your own. 

136. But the principal good that comes of art being 
followed in this reverent feeling is vitally manifest in the 
associative conditions of it. Men who know their place 
can take it and keep it, be it low or high, contentedly and 

30 firmly, neither yielding nor grasping ; and the harmony of 
hand and thought follows, rendering all great deeds of art 
possible — deeds in which the souls of men meet like the 
jewels in the»windows of Aladdin's palace, ° the httle gems 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 237 

and the large all equally pure, needing no cement but the 
fitting of facets ; while the associative work of immodest 
men is all jointless, and astir with wormy ambition; pu- 
tridly dissolute, and forever on the crawl : so that if it 
come together for a time, it can only be by metamorphosis s 
through flash of volcanic fire out of the vale of Siddim,° 
vitrifying the. clay of it, and fastening the slime, only to 
end in wilder scattering; according to the fate of those 
oldest, mightiest, immodestest of builders, of whom it is 
told in scorn, "They had brick for stone, and slime had lo 
they for mortar. "° 

137. The first function of Modesty, then, being this 
recognition of place, her second is the recognition of law, 
and delight in it, for the sake of law itself, whether her 
part be to assert it, or obey. For as it belongs to all im- 15 
modesty to defy or deny law, and assert privilege and 
license, according to its own pleasure (it being therefore 
rightly called ''msolent," that is, "custom-breaking," 
violating some usual and appointed order to attain for 
itself greater forwardness or power) , so it is the habit of 20 
all modesty to love the constancy and "so^ewnity,"° or, 
literally, "accustomedness," of law, seeking first what are 
the solemn, appointed, inviolable customs and general 
orders of nature, and of the Master of nature, touching 
the matter in hand ; and striving to put itself, as habitu- 25 
ally and inviolably, in compliance with them. Out of 
which habit, once established, arises what is rightly called 
"conscience," not "science" merely, but "with-science," 
a science "with us," such as only modest creatures can 
have — with or within them — and within all creation be- 30 
sides, every member of it, strong or weak, witnessing to- 
gether, and joining in the happy consciousness that each 
one's work is good; the bee also being profoundly of that 



238 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

opinion ; and the lark ; and the swallow, in that noisy, but 
modestly upside-down, Babel° of hers, under the eaves, 
with its unvolcanic slime for mortar; and the two ants 
who are asking of each other at the turn of that little ant's- 

5 foot-worn path through the moss " lor via e lor fortuna° ; " 
and the builders also, who built yonder pile of cloud-marble 
in the west, and the gilder who gilded it, and is gone down 
behind it. 

138. But I think we shall better understand what we 

lo ought of the nature of Modesty, and of her opposite, by 
taking a simple instance of both, in the practice of that 
art of music which the wisest have agreed in thinking the 
first element of education; only I must ask the reader's 
patience with me through a parenthesis. 

15 Among the foremost men whose power has had to as- 
sert itself, though with conquest, yet with countless loss, 
through peculiarly English disadvantages of circumstance, 
are assuredly to be ranked together, both for honor, and 
for mourning, Thomas Bewick° and George Cruikshank.° 

20 There is, however, less cause for regret in the instance of 
Bewick. We may understand that it was well for us once 
to see what an entirely powerful painter's genius, and an 
entirely keen and true man's temper, could achieve, to- 
gether, unhelped, but also unharmed, among the black 

25 banks and wolds of Tyne.° But the genius of Cruikshank 
has been cast away in an utterly ghastly and lamentable 
manner: his superb line-work, worthy of any class of 
subject, and his powers of conception and composition, 
of which I cannot venture to estimate the range in their 

30 degraded application, having been condemned, by his fate, ' 
to be spent either in rude jesting, or in vain war with con- 
ditions of vice too low alike for record or rebuke, among 
the dregs of the British populace. Yet perhaps I am 



ATHENA IK THE HEART 239 

wrong in regretting even this : it may be an appointed 
lesson for futurity, that the art of the best EngHsh etcher 
in the nineteenth century, spent on illustrations of the 
lives of burglars and drunkards, should one day be seen in 
museums beneath Greek vases fretted with drawings of the s 
wars of Troy, or side by side with Diirer's "Knight and 
Death.'' 

139. Be that as it may, I am at present glad to be able 
to refer to one of these perpetuations, by his strong hand, 
of such human character as our faultless British constitu- lo 
tion occasionally produces in out-of-the-way corners. It 

is among his illustrations of the Irish Rebellion, and repre- 
sents the pillage and destruction of a gentleman's house by 
the mob. They have made a heap in the drawing-room of 
the furniture and books, to set first fire to ; and are tearing 15 
up the floor for its more easily kindled planks, the less 
busily-disposed meanwhile hacking round in rage, with 
axes, and smashing what they can with butt-ends of guns. 
I do not care to follow with words the ghastly truth of the 
picture into its detail ; but the most expressive incident 20 
of the whole, and the one immediately to my purpose, is 
this, that one fellow has sat himself at the.piano, on which, 
hitting down fiercely with his clenched fists, he plays, grin- 
ning, such tune as may be so producible, to which melody 
two of his companions, flourishing knotted sticks, dance, 25 
after their manner, on the top of the instrument. 

140. I think we have in this conception as perfect an in- 
stance as we require of the lowest supposable phase of im- 
modest or licentious art in music ; the " inner consciousness 
of good " being dim, even in the musician and his audience, 30 
and wholly unsympathized with, and unacknowledged by 
the Delphian, Vestal, and all other prophetic and cosmic 
powers. ° This represented scene came into my mind sud- 



240 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

denly one evening, a few weeks ago, in contrast with an- 
other which I was watching in its reahty ; namely, a group 
of gentle school-girls, leaning over Mr. Charles Halle, as he 
was playing a variation on " Home, Sweet Home."° They 
5 had sustained with unwonted courage the glance of sub- 
dued indignation with which, having just closed a rip- 
pling melody of Sebastian Bach's° (much hke what one 
might fancy the singing of nightingales would be if they 
fed on honey instead of flies) , he turned to the slight, popular 

lo air. But they had their own associations with it, and 
besought for, and obtained it, and pressed close, at first, 
in vain, to see what no glance could follow, the traversing 
of the fingers. They soon thought no more of seeing. 
The wet eyes, round-open, and the little scarlet upper lips, 

15 hfted, and drawn slightly together, in passionate glow of 
utter wonder, became picture-like, porcelain-like, in mo- 
tionless joy, as the sweet multitude of low notes fell, in 
their timely infinities, like summer rain. Only La Robbia° 
himself (nor even he, unless with tenderer use of color than 

20 is usual in his work) could have rendered some image of that 
listening. 

141. But if the reader can give due vitality in his fancy 
to these two scenes, he will have in them representative 
types, clear enough for all future purpose, of the several 

25 agencies of debased and perfect art. And the interval 
may easily and continuously be filled by mediate grada- 
tions. Between the entirely immodest, unmeasured, and 
(in evil sense) unmannered, execution with the fist ; and 
the entirely modest, measured, and (in the noblest sense) 

30 mannered, or moral'd execution with the finger; between 
the impatient and unpractised doing, containing in itself 
the witness of lasting impatience and idleness through all 
previous Hfe, and the patient and practised doing, con- 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 241 

taining in itself the witness of self-restraint and un- 
wearied toil through all previous life; between the ex- 
pressed subject and sentiment of home violation, and the 
expressed subject and sentiment of home love; between 
the sympathy of audience, given in irreverent and con- 5 
temptuous rage, joyless as the rabidness of a dog, and the 
sympathy of audience given in an almost appalled humil- 
ity of intense, rapturous, and yet entirely reasoning and 
reasonable pleasure ; between these two limits of octave, 
the reader wull find he can class, according to its modesty, 10 
usefulness, and grace, or becomingness, all other musical 
art. For although purity of purpose and fineness of execu- 
tion by no means go together, degree to degree (since fine, 
and indeed all but the finest, work is often spent in the 
most wanton purpose — as in all our modern opera — 15 
and the rudest execution is again often joined with purest 
purpose, as in a mother's song to her child), still the 
entire accomphshment of music is only in the union of 
both. For the difference between that "all but" finest 
and "finest " is an infinite one ; and besides this, however 20 
the power of the performer, once attained, may be after- 
wards misdirected, in slavery to popular passion or child- 
ishness, and spend itself, at its sweetest, in idle melodies, 
cold and ephemeral (like Michael Angelo's snow statue 
in the other art), or else in vicious difficulty and miserable 25 
noise — crackling of thorns under the pot° of public sensu- 
ality — still, the attainment of this power, and the main- 
tenance of it, involve always in the executant some virtue 
or courage of high kind ; the understanding of which, and 
of the difference between the discipline which develops it 3° 
and the disorderly efforts of the amateur, it will be one 
of our first businesses to estimate rightly. And though 
not indeed by degree to degree, yet in essential relation 



242 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

(as of winds to waves, the one being always the true cause 
of the other, though they are not necessarily of equal force 
at the same time), we shall find vice in its varieties, with 
art-failure, — and virtue in its varieties, with art-success, 

5 — fall and rise together; the peasant-girl's song at her 
spinning-wheel, the peasant laborer's "to the oaks and 
rills," — domestic music, feebly yet sensitively skilful, — 
music for the multitude, of beneficent or of traitorous 
power, — dance-melodies, pure and orderly, or foul and 

lo frantic, — march-music, blatant in mere fever of animal 
pugnacity, or majestic with force of national duty and 
memory, — song-music, reckless, sensual, sickly, slovenly, 
forgetful even of the foolish words it effaces with fool- 
ish noise, — or thoughtful, sacred, healthful, artful, for- 

15 ever sanctifying noble thought with separately distin- 
guished loveliness of belonging sound, — all these families 
and gradations of good or evil, however mingled, follow, 
in so far as they are good, one constant law of virtue (or 
''life-strength," which is the literal meaning of the word, 

20 and its intended one, in wise men's mouths), and in so far 
as they are evil, are evil by outlawry and unvirtue, or death- 
w^eakness. Then, passing wholly beyond the domain of 
death, we may still imagine the ascendant nobleness of 
the art, through all the concordant life of incorrupt crea- 

25 tures, and a continually deeper harmony of "puissant 
words and murmurs made to bless, "° until we reach 

" The undisturbed song of pure consent, 
Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne." 

142. And so far as the sister arts can be conceived to have 

30 place or office, their virtues are subject to a law absolutely 

the same as that of music, only extending its authority into 

more various conditions, owing to the introduction of a 



ATHENA m THE HEART 243 

distinctly representative and historical power, which acts 
under logical as well as mathematical restrictions, and is 
capable of endlessly changeful fault, fallacy, and defeat, 
as well as of endlessly manifold victory. 

143. Next to Modesty, and her delight in measures, let 5 
us reflect a little on the character of her adversary, the 
Goddess of Liberty, and her delight in absence of meas- 
ures, or in false ones. It is true that there are liberties and 
liberties. Yonder torrent, crystal-clear, and arrow-swift, 
with its spray leaping into the air like white troops of 10 
fawns, is free enough. Lost, presently, amidst bankless, 
boundless marsh — soaking in slow shallowness, as it will, 
hither and thither, listless, among the poisonous reeds 
and unresisting slime — it is free also. We may choose 
which hberty we hke, — the restraint of voiceful rock, 15 
or the dumb and edgeless shore of darkened sand. Of 
that evil liberty which men are now glorifying, and pro- 
claiming as essence of gospel to all the earth, and will 
presently, I suppose, proclaim also to the stars, with in- 
vitation to them out of their courses, — and of its op]iosite 20 
continence, which is the clasp and XP^^^l 7rc/3oVr;° of 
Aglaia's cestus, we must try to find out something true. 
For no quality of Art has been more powerful in its in- 
fluence on public mind; none is more frequently the sub- 
ject of popular praise, or the end of vulgar effort, than 25 
what we call " Freedom." It is necessary to determine the 
justice or injustice of this popular praise. 

144. I said, a little while ago, that the practical teaching 
of the masters of Art was summed by the of Giotto. 
"You may judge my masterhood of craft," Giotto tells us, 30 
"by seeing that I can draw a circle unerringly." And we 
may safely believe him, understanding him to mean that, 
though more may be necessary to an artist than such a 



244 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

power, at least this power is necessary. The qualities of 
hand and eye needful to do this are the first conditions 
of artistic craft. 

145. Try to draw a circle yourself with the " free " hand, 
5 and with a single line. You cannot do it if your hand 

trembles, nor if it hesitates, nor if it is unmanageable, nor 
if it is in the common sense of the word "free.'' So far 
from being free, it must be under a control as absolute and 
accurate as if it were fastened to an inflexible bar of steel, 
lo And yet it must move, under this necessary control, with 
perfect, untormented serenity of ease. 

146. That is the condition of all good work whatsoever. 
All freedom is error. Every line you lay down is either 
right or wrong ; it may be timidly and awkwardly wrong, 

15 or fearlessly and impudently wrong. The aspect of the 
impudent wrongness is pleasurable to vulgar persons, and 
is what they commonly call "free" execution; the timid, 
tottering, hesitating wrongness is rarely so attractive ; yet, 
sometimes, if accompanied with good qualities, and right 

20 aims in other directions, it becomes in a manner charm- 
ing, like the inarticulateness of a child ; but, whatever the 
charm or manner of the error, there is but one question 
ultimately to be asked respecting every line you draw. Is 
it right or wrong? If right, it most assuredly is not a 

25 "free" line, but an intensely continent, restrained, and 
considered line ; and the action of the hand in laying it is 
just as decisive, and just as "free," as the hand of a first- 
rate surgeon in a critical incision. A great operator told 
me that his hand could check itself within about the two- 

30 hundredth of an inch, in penetrating a membrane ; and 
this, of course, without the help of sight, by sensation 
only. With help of sight, and in action on a substance 
which does not quiver nor yield, a fine artist's line is meas- 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 245 

urable in its proposed direction to considerably less than 
the thousandth of an inch. 
A wide freedom, truly ! 

147. The conditions of popular art which most foster 
the common ideas about freedom, are merely results of s 
irregularly energetic effort by men imperfectly educated ; 
these conditions being variously mingled with cruder 
mannerisms resulting from timidity, or actual imperfec- 
tion of body. Northern hands and eyes are, of course, 
never so subtle as Southern° ; and in very cold countries, lo 
artistic execution is palsied. The effort to break through 
this timidity, or to refine the bluntncss, may lead to a 
licentious impetuosity, or an ostentatious minuteness. 
Every man's manner has this kind of relation to some 
defect in his physical powers or modes of thought ; so 15 
that in the greatest work there is no manner visible. It 

is at first uninteresting from its quietness ; the majesty 
of restrained power only dawns gradually upon us, as we 
walk towards its horizon. 

There is, indeed, often great delightfulness in the inno- 20 
cent manners of artists who have real power and honesty, 
and draw, in this way or that, as best they can, under 
such and such untoward circumstances of Hfe. But the 
greater part of the looseness, flimsiness, or audacity of 
modern work is the expression of an inner spirit of license 25 
in mind and heart, connected, as I said, with the peculiar 
folly of this age, its hope of, and trust in, "liberty," of 
which we must reason a little in more general terms. 

148. I believe we can nowhere find a better type of 

a perfectly free creature than in the common house-fly. 30 

Nor free only, but brave; and irreverent to a degree 
which I think no human republican could by any philoso- 
phy exalt hims'^lf to. There is no courtesy in him; he 



246 THE QUEEK OF THE AIR 

does not care whether it is king or clown w^hom he teases ; 
and in every step of his swift mechanical march, and in 
every pause of his resolute observation, there is one and 
the same expression of perfect egotism, perfect independ- 

5 ence and self-confidence, and conviction of the world's 
having been made for flies. Strike at him with- your hand, 
and to him, the mechanical fact and external aspect of 
the matter is, what to you it would be if an acre of red clay, 
ten feet thick, tore itself up from the ground in one mas- 

lo sive field, hovered over you in the air for a second, and 
came crashing down with an aim. That is the external 
aspect of it ; the inner aspect, to his fly's mind, is of a quite 
natural and unimportant occurrence — one of the mo- 
mentary conditions of his active hfe. He steps out of the 

15 way of your hand, and alights on the back of it. You 
cannot terrify him, nor govern him, nor persuade him, nor 
convince him. He has his own positive opinion on all 
matters ; not an unwise one, usually, for his own ends ; 
and will ask no advice of yours. He has no work to do — 

20 no tyrannical instinct to obey. The earthworm has his 
digging ; the bee her gathering and building ; the spider 
her cunning network ; the ant her treasury and accounts. 
All these are comparatively slaves, or people of vulgar 
business. But your fly, free in the air, free in the chamber 

25 — a black incarnation of caprice, wandering, investigating, 
flitting, flirting, feasting at his will, with rich variety of 
choice in feast, from the heaped sweets in the grocer's 
window to those of the butcher's back yard, and from the 
galled place on your cab-horse's back, to the brown spot 

30 in the road, from which, as the hoof disturbs him, he rises 
with angry repubhcan buzz — what freedom is like his? 
149. For captivity, again, perhaps your poor watch- 
dog is as sorrowful a type as you will easily find. Mine 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 247 

certainly is. The day is lovely, but I must write this, 
and cannot go out with him. He is chained in the yard 
because I do not like dogs in rooms, and the gardener does 
not like dogs in gardens. He has no books, — nothing 
but his own weary thoughts for company, and a group of 5 
those free flies, whom he snaps at, with sullen ill success. 
Such dim hope as he may have that I may take him out 
with me, will be, hour by hour, wearily disappointed ; or, 
worse, darkened at once into a leaden despair by an author- 
itative "No" — too well understood. His fidehty only 10 
seals his fate ; if he would not watch for me, he would be 
sent away, and go hunting with some happier master: 
but he watches, and is wise, and faithful, and miserable ; 
and his high animal intellect only gives him the wistful 
powers of wonder, and sorrow, and desire, and affection, 15 
which embitter his captivity. Yet of the two, would we 
rather be watch-dog or fly? 

150. Indeed, the first point we have all to determine 
is not how free we are, but what kind of creatures we are. 
It is of small importance to any of us whether we get 20 
hberty ; but of the greatest that we deserve it. Whether 
we can win it, fate must determine; but that we will be 
worthy of it we may ourselves determine ; and the sorrow- 
fullest fate of all that we can suffer is to have it iviihout 
deserving it. 25 

151. I have hardly patience to hold my pen and go on 
writing, as I remember (I would that it were possible for a 
few consecutive instants to forget) the infinite follies of 
modern thought in this matter, centred in the notion that 
liberty is good for a man, irrespectively of the use he is 30 
likely to make of it. Folly unfathomable ! unspeakable ! 
unendurable to look in the full face of, as the laugh of a 
cretin. ° You will send your child, will you, into a room 



248 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

where the table is loaded with sweet wine and fruit — 
some poisoned, some not ? — you will say to him, "Choose 
freely, my little child ! It is so good for you to have free- 
dom of choice ; it forms your character — your individu- 
5 ahty ! If you take the wrong cup or the wrong berry, 
you will die before the day is over, but you will have 
acquired the dignity of a Free child ? " 

152. You think that puts the case too sharply? I tell 
you, lover of liberty, there is no choice offered to you, but 

lo it is similarly between life and death. There is no act, nor 
option of act, possible, but the wrong deed or option has 
poison in it which will stay in your veins thereafter forever. 
Never more to all eternity can you be as you might have 
been had you not done that — chosen that. You have 

IS "formed your character," forsooth! No; if you have 
chosen ill, you have De-formed it, and that forever ! In 
some choices it had been better for you that a red-hot iron 
bar struck you aside, scarred and helpless, than that you 
had so chosen. " You will know better next time ! " No. 

2o Next time will never come. Next time the choice will be 
in quite another aspect — between quite different things, — 
you, weaker than you were by the evil into which you have 
fallen ; it, more doubtful than it was, by the increased 
dimness of your sight. No one ever gets wiser by doing 

25 wrong, nor stronger. You will get wiser and stronger 
only by doing right, whether forced or not ; the prime, the 
one need is to do that, under whatever compulsion, until 
you can do it without compulsion. And then you are a 
Man.° 

30 153. " What ! '' a wayward youth might perhaps answer, 
incredulously, "no one ever gets wiser by doing wrong? 
Shall I not know the world best by trying the wrong of it, 
and repenting ? Have I not, even as it is, learned much by 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 249 

many of my errors?" Indeed, the effort by which par- 
tially you recovered yom-self was precious; that part of 
your thought by which you discerned the error was pre- 
cious. What wisdom and strength you kept, and rightly 
used, are rewarded ; and in the pain and the repentance, 5 
and in the acquaintance with the aspects of folly and sin, 
you have learned something; how much less than you 
would have learned in right paths can never be told, but 
that it is less is certain. Your liberty of choice has simply 
destroyed for you so much life and strength, never regain- 10 
able. It is true, you now know the habits of swine, and 
the taste of husks; do you think your father could not 
have taught you to know better habits and pleasanter 
tastes, if you had stayed in his house°; and that the 
knowledge you have lost would not have been more, as well 15 
as sweeter, than that you have gained ? But " it so forms 
my individuahty to be free!" Your individuality was 
given you by God, and in your race, and if you have any 
to speak of, you will want no lil^erty. You will want a den 
to work in, and peace, and light — no more, — in absolute 20 
need ; if more, in any^vise, it will still not be liberty, but 
direction, instruction, reproof, and sympathy. But if you 
have no individuality, if there is no true character nor 
true desire in you, then you will indeed want to be free. 
You will begin early, and, as a boy, desire to be a man ; 25 
and, as a man, think yourself as good as every other. 
You will choose freely to eat, freely to drink, freely to 
stagger and fall, freely, at last, to curse yourself and die. 
Death is the only real freedom possible to us ; and that is 
consummate freedom, permission for every particle in the 3° 
rotting body to leave its neighbor particle, and shift for 
itself. You call it " corruption " in the flesh ; but before 
it comes to that, aU liberty is an ecjual corruption in mind. 



250 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

You ask for freedom of thought ; but if you have not suffi- 
cient grounds for thought, you have no business to think ; 
and if you have sufficient grounds, you have no business 
to think wrong. Only one thought is possible to you if 
5 you are wise — your liberty is geometrically proportionate 
to your folly. 

154. "But all this glory and activity of our age; what 
are they owing to, but to our freedom of thought ? " In a 
measure, they are owing — what good is in them — to the 

lo discovery of many lies, and the escape from the power of 
evil. Not to liberty, but to the deliverance from evil or 
cruel masters. Brave men have dared to examine lies 
which had long been taught, not because they were free- 
thinkers, but because they were such stern and close 

15 thinkers that the lie could no longer escape them. Of 
course the restriction of thought, or of its expression, by 
persecution, is merely a form of violence, justifiable or not, 
as other violence is, according to the character of the 
persons against whom it is exercised, and the divine and 

20 eternal laws which it vindicates or violates. We must not 
burn a man alive for saying that the Athanasian creed° is 
ungrammatical, nor stop a bishop's salary because we are 
getting the worst of an argument with him ; neither must 
we let drunken men howl in the pubhc streets at night. 

25 There is much that is true in the part of Mr. Miirs° essay 
on Liberty which treats of freedom of thought ; some im- 
portant truths are there beautifully expressed, but many, 
quite vital, are omitted ; and the balance, therefore, is 
wrongly struck. The liberty of expression, with a great 

30 nation, would become like that in a well-educated com- 
pany, in which there is indeed freedom of speech, but not 
of clamor ; or like that in an orderly senate, in which men 
who deserve to be heard, are heard in due time, and under 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 251 

determined restrictions. The degree of liberty you can 
rightly grant to a number of men is in the inverse ratio of 
their desire for it; and a general hush, or call to order, 
would be often very desirable in this England of ours. 
For the rest, of any good or evil extant, it is impossible to s 
say what measure is owing to restraint, and what to license 
where the right is balanced between them. I was not a 
little provoked one day, a summer or two since, in Scot- 
land, because the Duke of Athol hindered me from ex- 
amining the gneiss and slate junctions in Glen Tilt,° at lo 
the hour convenient to me ; but I saw them at last, and in 
quietness ; and to the very restriction that annoyed me, 
owed, probably, the fact of their being in existence, in- 
stead of being blasted away by a mob-company ; while the 
''free" paths and inlets of Loch Katrine° and the Lake 15 
of Geneva are forever trampled down and destroyed, 
not by one duke, but by tens of thousands of ignorant 
tyrants. 

155. So, a Dean and Chapter" may, perhaps, unjusti- 
fiably charge me twopence for seeing a cathedral ; but 20 
your free mob pulls spire and all down about my ears, and 

I can see it no more forever. And even if I cannot get up 
to the granite junctions in the glen, the stream comes down 
from them pure to the Garry ; but in Beddington Park I 
am stopped by the newly-erected fence of a building 25 
speculator; and the bright Wandel, divine of waters as 
Castaly,° is filled by the free pubHc with old shoes, obscene 
crockery, and ashes. 

156. In fine, the arguments for liberty may in general 
be summed in a few very simple forms, as follows : — 30 

Misguiding is mischievous : therefore guiding is. 
If the blind lead the blind, both fall into the ditch° : 
therefore, nobody should lead anybody. 



252 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

Lambs and fawns should be left free in the fields ; much 
more bears and wolves. 

If a man's gun and shot are his own, he may fire in any 
direction he pleases. 
5 A fence across a road is inconvenient ; much more one 
at the side of it. 

Babes should not be swaddled with their hands bound 
down to their sides : therefore they should be thrown out 
to roll in the kennels naked. 

lo None of these arguments are good, and the practical 
issues of them are worse. For there are certain eternal 
laws for human conduct which are quite clearly discern- 
ible by human reason. So far as these are discovered and 
obeyed, by whatever machinery or authority the obedi- 

15 ence is procured, there follow hfe and strength. So far 
as they are disobeyed, by whatever good intention the 
disobedience is brought about, there follow ruin and sor- 
row. And the first duty of every man in the world is to 
find his true master, and, for his own good, submit to him ; 

20 and to find his true inferior, and, for that inferior's good, 
conquer him. The punishment is sure, if we either refuse 
the reverence, or are too cowardly and indolent to enforce 
the compulsion. A base nation crucifies or poisons its 
wise men, and lets its fools rave and rot in its streets. A 

25 wise nation obeys the one, restrains the other, and cher- 
ishes all. 

157. The best examples of the results of wise normal 
discipline in Art will be foimd in whatever evidence re- 
mains respecting the lives of great Italian painters, though, 

30 unhappily, in eras of progress, but just in proportion to 
the admirableness and efficiency of the life, will be usually 
the scantiness of its history. The individualities and lib- 
erties which are causes of destruction may be recorded ; 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 253 

but the loyal conditions of daily breath are never told. 
Because Leonardo made models of machines, dug canals, 
built fortifications, and dissipated half his art-power in 
capricious ingenuities, we have many anecdotes of him ; — 
but no picture of importance on canvas, and only a few 5 
withered stains of one upon a wall. But because his pupil, 
or reputed pupil, Luini,° labored in constant and successful 
simplicity, we have no anecdotes of him ; — only hundreds 
of noble works. Luini is, perhaps, the best central type 
of the highly-trained Italian painter. He is the only man ic 
who entirely united the religious temper Avhich was tfie 
spirit-life of art, with the physical power which was its 
bodily life. He joins the purity and passion of Angelico° 
to the strength of Veronese ° : the two elements, poised in 
perfect balance, are so calmed and restrained, each by the 15 
other, that most of us lose the sense of both. The artist 
does not see the strength, by reason of the chastened spirit 
in which it is used : and the religious visionary does not 
recognize the passion, by reason of the frank human truth 
with which it is rendered. He is a man ten times greater 20 
than Leonardo ; — a mighty colorist, while Leonardo was 
only a fine draughtsman in black, staining the chiaroscuro 
•drawing, like a colored print : he perceived and rendered 
the delicatest types of human beauty that have been 
painted since the days of the Greeks, while Leonardo de- 25 
praved his finer instincts by caricature, and remained to 
the end of his days the slave of an archaic smile : and he 
is a designer as frank, instinctive, and exhaustless as Tin- 
toret, while Leonardo's design is only an agony of sci- 
ence, admired chiefly because it is painful, and capable of 3° 
analysis in its best accomplishment. Luini has left noth- 
ing behind him that is not lovely ; but of his life I believe 
hardly anything is known beyond remnants of tradition 



254 THE QUEEiT OF THE AIR 

which murmur about Lugano ° and Saronno,° and which 
remain ungleaned. This only is certain, that he was born 
in the lovehest district of North Italy, where hills, and 
streams, and air meet in softest harmonies. Child of 
5 the Alps, and of their divinest lake, he is taught, without 
doubt or dismay, a lofty religious creed, and a sufficient 
law of Hfe and of its mechanical arts. Whether les- 
soned by Leonardo himself, or merely one of many disci- 
plined in the system of the Milanese school, ° he learns 

lo unerringly to draw, unerringly and enduringly to paint. 
His tasks are set him without question day by day, 
by men who are justly satisfied with his work, and who 
accept it without any harmful praise, or senseless blame. 
Place, scale, and subject are determined for him on th« 

15 cloister wall or the church dome ; as he is required, and 
for sufficient daily bread, and little more, he paints what 
he has been taught to design wisely, and has passion to 
realize gloriously : every touch he lays is eternal, every 
thought he conceives is beautiful and pure: his hand 

20 moves always in radiance of blessing ; from day to day his 
life enlarges in power and peace ; it passes away cloud- 
lessly, the starry twilight remaining arched far agains^ 
the night. 

158. Oppose to such a hfe as this that of a great painter 

25 amidst the elements of modern English hberty. Take the 
life of Turner, in whom the artistic energy and inherent 
love of beauty were at least as strong as in Luini : but, 
amidst the disorder and ghastliness of the lower streets of 
London, his instincts in early infancy were warped into 

30 toleration of evil, or even into delight in it.° He gathers 
what he can of instruction by questioning and prying 
among half-informed masters ; spells out some knowledge 
of classical fable ; educates himself, by an admirable force, 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 255 

to the production of wildly majestic or pathetically tender 
and pure pictures, by which he cannot live. There is no 
one to judge them, or to command him : only some of the 
Enghsh upper classes hire him to paint their houses and 
parks, and destroy the drawings afterwards by the most 5 
wanton neglect. * Tired of laboring carefully, without 
either reward or praise, he dashes out into various experi- 
mental and popular works — makes himself the servant 
of the lower public, and is dragged hither and thither at 
their will ; while yet, helpless and guideless, he indulges 10 
his idiosyncrasies till they change into insanities ; the 
strength of his soul increasing its sufferings, and giving 
force to its errors ; all the purpose of life degenerating into 
instinct; and the web of his work wrought, at last, of 
beauties too subtle to be understood, his liberty, with 15 
vices too singular to be forgiven — all useless, because 
magnificent idiosyncrasy had become solitude, or conten- 
tion, in the midst of a reckless populace, instead of sub- 
mitting itself in loyal harmony to the Art-laws of an un- 
derstanding nation. And the life passed away in darkness ; 20 
and its final work, in all the best beauty of it, has already 
perished, only enough remaining to teach us what we 
have lost. 

159. These are the opposite effects of Law and of Liberty 
on men of the highest powers. In the case of inferiors 25 
the contrast is still more fatal : under strict law, they 
become the subordinate workers in great schools, healthily 
aiding, echoing, or supplying, with multitudinous force of 
hand, the mind of the leading masters : they are the name- 
less carvers of great architecture — stainers of glass — 30 
hammerers of iron — helpful scholars, whose work ranks 
round, if not with, their master's, and never disgraces it. 
But the inferiors under a system of license for the most 



256 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

part perish in miserable effort ; ^ a few struggle into perni- 
cious eminence — harmful alike to themselves and to all 
who admire them ; many die of starvation ; many insane, 
either in weakness of insolent egotism, like Haydon,° or in 
5 a conscientious agony of beautiful purpose and warped 
power, like Blake. ° There is no probability of the 
persistence of a licentious school in any good accidentally 

^ As I correct this sheet for press, my "Pall Mall Gazette" of 
last Saturday, April 17, is lying on the table by me. I j^rint a 

lo few lines out of it: — 

"An Artist's Death. — A sad story was told at an inquest held 
in St. Pancras last night by Dr. Lankester on the body of . . ., 
aged fifty-nine, a French artist, who was found dead in his bed 
at his rooms in . . . Street. M. . , ., also an artist, said he 

15 had known the deceased for fifteen years. He once held a high 
position, and being anxious to make a narne in the world, he five 
years ago commenced a large picture, which he hoped, when com- 
pleted, to have in the gallery at Versailles ; and with that view he 
sent a photograph of it to the French Emperor.** He also had an 

20 idea of sending it to the English Royal Academ3^ He labored on 
this picture, neglecting other work which would have paid him 
well, and gradually sank lower and lower into poverty. His 
friends assisted him, but being absorbed in his great work, he 
did not heed their advice, and they left him. He was, however, 

25 assisted by the French Ambassador, and last Saturday, he (the 
witness) saw deceased, who was much depressed in spirits, as he 
expected the brokers to be put in possession for rent. He said 
his troubles were so great that he feared his brain would give 
way. The witness gave him a shilling, for which he appeared 

30 very thankful. On Monday the witness called upon him, but 
received no answer to his knock. He went again on Tuesday, 
and entered the deceased's bedroom, and found him dead. Dr, 
George Ross said that when called in to the deceased he had been 
dead at least two days. The room was in a filthy, dirty condition, 

35 and the picture referred to — certainly a very fine one — was in 
that room. The post-mortem examination showed that the cause 
of death was fatty degeneration of the heart, the latter probably 
having ceased its action through the mental excitement of the 
^ieceased." 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 257 

discovered by them; there is an approximate certainty 
of their gathering, with acclaiin, round any shadow of evil, 
and following it to whatever (juartcr of destruction it may 
lead. 

160. Thus far the notes on Freedom. Now, lastly, here 5 
is some talk which I tried at the time to make intelligible ; 
and with which I close this volume, because it will serve 
sufficiently to express the practical relation in which I 
think the art and imagination of the Greeks stand to our 
own ; and will show the reader that my view of that re- ic 
lation is unchanged, from the first day on which I began to 
write, until now. 



THE HERCULES OF CAMARINA 

ADDRESS TO THE STUDENTS OF THE ART SCHOOL OF 

SOUTH LAMBERT, MARCH 15, 1869 15 

161. Among the photographs of Greek coins which 
present so many admirable subjects for your study, I must 
speak for the present of one only : the Hercules of Cama- 
rina.° You have, represented by a Greek workman, in that 
coin, the face of a man, and the skin of a lion's head. And 20 
the man's face is hke a man's face, but the hon's skin is not 
like a lion's skin. 

162. Now there are some people who will tell you that 
Greek art is fine, because it is true ; and because it carves 
men's faces as like men's as it can. 25 

And there are other people who will tell you that Greek 
art is fine, because it is not true ; and carves a lion's skin 
so as to look not at all like a lion's skin, 
s 



258 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

And you fancy that one or other of these sets of people 
must be wrong, and are perhaps much puzzled to find out 
which you should believe. 

But neither of them are^ wrong, and you will have 

5 eventually to believe, or rather to understand and know, 

in reconciliation, the truths taught by each ; but for the 

present, the teachers of the first group are those you must 

follow. 

It is they who tell you the deepest and usefullest truth, 
lo which involves all others in time. Greek art, and all other 
art, is fine when it makes a man's face as like a man's face 
as it can. Hold to that. All kinds of nonsense are talked 
to you, now-a-days, ingeniously and irrelevantly about art. 
Therefore, for the most part of the day, shut your ears, and 
15 keep your eyes open : and understand primarily, what you 
may, I fancy, understand easily, that the greatest masters 
of all greatest schools — ■ Phidias, Donatello, Titian, Velas- 
quez, or Sir Joshua Reynolds ° — all tried to make human 
creatures as like human creatures as they could ; and that 
20 anything less hke humanity than their work, is not so good 
as theirs. 

Get that well driven into j'our heads; and don't let it 
out again, at your peril. 

163. Having got it well in, you may then further under- 
25 stand, safely, that there is a great deal of secondary work 
in pots, and pans, and floors, and carpets, and shawls, 
and architectural ornament, which ought, essentially, to 
be unlike reality, and to depend for its charm on quite 
other qualities than imitative ones. But all such art is 
30 inferior and secondary — much of it more or less instinc- 
tive and animal, and a civilized human creature can only 
learn its principles rightly, by knowing those of great civ- 
ihzed art first — which is always the representation, to the 

His] 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 259 

utmost of its power, of whatever it has got to show — 
made to look as like the thing as possible. Go into the 
National Gallery, and look at the foot of Correggio's° 
Venus there. Correggio made it as hke a foot as he could, 
and you won't easily find anything Hker.° Now, you will 5 
find on any Greek vase something meant for a foot, or a 
hand, which is not at all like one. The Greek vase is a 
good thing in its way, but Correggio's picture is the best 
work. 

164. So, again, go into the Turner room of the National lo 
Gallery, and look at Turner's drawing of "Ivy Bridge." 
You will find the water in it is like real water, and the ducks 
in it are like real ducks. Then go into the British Mu- 
seum, and look for an Egyptian landscape, and you will 
find the water in that constituted of blue zigzags, not at all 15 
like water ; and ducks in the middle of it made of red lines, 
looking not in the least as if they could stand stufl^ng with 
sage and onions. They are very good in their way, but 
Turner's are better. 

165. I will not pause to fence my general principle 20 
against what you perfectly well know of the due con- 
tradiction, — that a thing may be painted very like, yet 
painted ill. Rest content with knowing that it must be 
like, if it is painted well; and take this further general 
law : Imitation is Hke charity. When it is done for love it 25 
is lovely ; when it is done for show, hateful. 

166. Well, then, this Greek coin is fine, first because 
the face is like a face. Perhaps you think there is some- 
thing particularly handsome in the face, which you can't 
see in the photograph, or can't at present appreciate. But 30 
there is nothing of the kind. It is a very regular, quiet, 
commonplace sort of face; and any average English 
gentleman's, of good descent, would be far handsomer. 



260 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

167. Fix that in your heads also, therefore, that Greek 
faces are not particularly beautiful. Of the much non- 
sense against which you are to keep your ears shut, that 
which is talked to you of the Greek ideal of beauty is 

5 among the absolutest. There is not a single instance of a 
very beautiful head left by the highest school of Greek 
art. On coins, there is even no approximately beautiful 
one. The Juno of Argos° is a virago; the Athena of 
Athens grotesque, the Athena of Corinth° is insipid ; and 

lo of Thurium,° sensual. The Siren Ligeia,° and fountain 
of Arethusa,° on the coins, of Terina and Syracuse, ° 
are prettier, but totally without expression, and chiefly 
set off by their well-curled hair. You might have ex- 
pected something subtle in Mercuries ; but the Mercury of 

15 7Enus° is a very stupid-looking fellow, in a cap like a bowl, 
with a knob on the top of it. The Bacchus of Thasos° is 
a drayman with his hair pomatum 'd.° The Jupiter of 
Syracuse is, however, calm and refined ; and the Apollo 
of Clazomense° would have been impressive, if he had not 

20 come down to us much flattened by friction. But on the 
whole, the merit of Greek coins does not primarily depend 
on beauty of features, nor even, in the period of highest 
art, that of the statues. You may take the Venus of 
Melos° as a standard of beauty of the central Greek type. 

25 She has tranquil, regular, and lofty features ; but could 
not hold her own for a moment against the beauty of a 
simple English girl, of pure race and kind heart. 

168. And the reason that Greek art, on the whole, bores 
you (and you know it does) , is that you are always forced 

30 to look in it for something that is not there ; but which 
may be seen every day, in real life, all round you; and 
which you are naturally disposed to delight in, and ought 
to delight in. For the Greek race was not at all one of 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 261 

exalted beauty, but only of general and healthy complete- 
ness of form. They were only, and could be only, beauti- 
ful in body to the degree that they were beautiful in soul 
(for you will find, when you read deeply into the matter, 
that the body is only the soul made visible) . And the s 
Greeks were indeed very good people, much better people 
than most of us think, or than many of us are ; but there 
are better people alive now than the best of them, and 
lovelier people to be seen now than the loveliest of them. 

169. Then what are the merits of this Greek art, which lo 
make it so exemplary for you ? Well, not that it is beauti- 
ful, but that it is Right. ^ All that it desires to do, it does, 
and all that it does, does well. You will find, as you ad- 
vance in the knowledge of art, that its laws of self-restraint 
are very marvellous ; that its peace of heart, and content- 15 
ment in doing a simple thing, with only one or tvvo quali- 
ties, restrictedly desired, and sufficiently attained, are a 
most wholesome element of education for you, as opposed 
to the wild writhing, and wrestling, and longing for the 
moon, and tilting at windmills, and agony of eyes, and 20 
torturing of fingers, and general spinning out of one's 
soul into fiddle-strings, ° which constitute the ideal life of a 
modern artist. 

Also observe, there is entire masterhood of its business 
up to the required point. A Greek does not reach after 25 
other people's strength, nor outreach his own. He never 
tries to paint before he can draw; he never tries to lay 
on flesh where there are no bones ; and he never expects to 
find the bones of anything in his inner consciousness. 
Those are his first merits - — sincere and innocent pur})ose, 3c 
strong common sense and principle, and all the strength 

^ Compare above, § 101. 



262 ^ THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

that comes of these, and all the grace that follows on that 
strength. 

170. But, secondly, Greek art is always exemplary in 
disposition of masses, which is a thing that in modern days 

5 students rarely look for, artists not enough, and the public 
never. But, whatever else Greek work may fail of, you 
may be always sure its masses are well placed, and 
their placing has been the object of the most subtle care. 
Look, for instance, at the inscription in front of this Her- 

lo cules of the name of the town — Camarina. You can't 
read it, even though you may know Greek, without some 
pains ; for the sculptor knew well enough that it mattered 
very little whether you read it or not, for the Camarina 
Hercules could tell his own story ; but what did above all 

15 things matter was, that no K or A or M should come in a 
wrong place with respect to the outline of the head, and 
divert the eye from it, or spoil any of its lines. So the 
whole inscription is thrown into a sweeping curve of 
gradually diminishing size, continuing from the hon's 

20 paws, round the neck, up to the forehead, and answering 
a decorative purpose as completely as the curls of the mane 
opposite. Of these, again, you cannot change or displace 
one without mischief ; they are almost as even in reticula- 
tion as a piece of basket-work; but each has a different 

25 form and a due relation to the rest, and if you set to work 
to draw that mane rightly, you will find that, whatever 
time you give to it, you can't get the tresses quite into their 
places, and that every tress out of its place does an injury. 
If you want to test your powers of accurate drawing, you 

30 may make that lion's mane your pons asinorum.° I have 
never yet met with a student who didn't make an ass in a 
lion's skin of himself, when he tried it. 

171. Granted, however, that these tresses may be 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 263 

finely placed, still they are not like a lion's mane. So we 
come back to the question, — if the face is to be like a 
man's face, why is not the lion's mane to be Hke a Hon's 
mane? Well, because it can't be like a lion's mane with- 
out too much trouble, — and inconvenience after that, 5 
and poor success after all. Too much trouble, in cutting 
the die into fine fringes and jags ; inconvenience after 
that, — because fringes and jags would spoil the surface 
of a coin ; poor success after all, — because, though you 
can easily stamp cheeks and foreheads smooth at a blow, 10 
you can't stamp projecting tresses fine at a blow, whatever 
pains you take with your die. 

So your Greek uses his common sense, wastes no time, 
uses no skill, and says to you, "Here are beautifully set 
tresses, which I have carefully designed and easily stamped. 15 
Enjoy them, and if you cannot understand that they mean 
hon's mane, heaven mend your wits." 

172. See, then, you have in this work well-founded 
knowledge, simple and right aims, thorough mastery of 
handicraft, splendid invention in arrangement, unerring 20 
common sense in treatment, — merits, these, I think, ex- 
emplary enough to justify our tormenting you a httle with 
Greek art. But it has one merit more than these, the 
greatest of all. It always means something worth saying. 
Not merely worth saying for that time only, but for all 25 
time. What do you think this helmet of lion's hide is 
always given to Hercules for ? You can't suppose it means 
only that he once killed a lion, and always carried its skin 
afterwards to show that he had, as Indian sportsmen 
send home stuffed rugs, with claws at the corners, and a 3c 
lump in the middle which one tumbles over every time one 
stirs the fire. What was this Nemean Lion, whose spoils 
were evermore to cover Hercules from the cold? Not 



264 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

merely a large specimen of Felis Leo,° ranging the fields of 
Nemea, be sure of that. This Nemean cub was one of a 
bad litter. Born of Typhon and Echidna, ° — of the whirl- 
wind and the snake, — Cerberus his brother, the Hydra of 
5 Lerna° his sister, — it must have been difficult to get his 
hide off him. He had to be found in darkness, too, and 
dealt upon without weapons, b}^ grip at the throat — ar- 
rows and club of no avail against him. What does all that 
mean? 

lo 173. It means that the Nemean Lion is the first great 
adversary of life, whatever that may be — to Hercules, or 
to any of us, then or now. The first monster we have to 
strangle, or be destroyed by, fighting in the dark, and with 
none to help us, only Athena standing by to encourage 

15 with her smile. Every man's Nemean Lion lies in wait 
for him somewhere. The slothful man says, there is a lion 
in the path.° He says well. The quiet wnslothful man 
says the same, and knows it too. But they differ in their 
further reading of the text. The slothful man says, I shall 

20 be slain, and the unslothful, it shall be. It is the first 
ugly and strong enemy that rises against us, all future 
victory depending on victory over that. Kill it ; and 
through all the rest of life, what was once dreadful is your 
armor, and you are clothed with that conquest for every 

25 other, and helmed with its crest of fortitude for evermore. 

Alas, we have most of us to walk bare-headed ; but that 

is the meaning of the story of Nemea, — worth laying to 

heart and thinking of sometimes, when you see a dish 

garnished with parsley, which was the crown at the Ne- 

30 mean games. 

174. How far, then, have we got in our Hst of the merits 
of Greek art now? 
Sound knowledge. 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 265 

Simple aims. 

Mastered craft. 

Vivid invention. 

Strong common sense. 

And eternally true and wise meaning. 5 

Are these not enough? Here is one more, then, which 
will find favor, I should think, with the British Lion. 
Greek art is never frightened at anything ; it is always cool. 

175. It differs essentially from all other art, past or 
present, in this incapability of being frightened. Half lo 
the power and imagination of every other school depend on 

a certain feverish terror mingling with their sense of beauty, 
— the feeling that a child has in a dark room, or a sick 
person in seeing ugly dreams. But the Greeks never 
have ugly dreams. They cannot draw anything ugly 15 
when they try. Sometimes they put themselves to 
their wits'-end to draw an ugly thing, — the Medusa's 
head, for instance, — but they can't do it, not they, 
because nothing frightens them. They widen the mouth, 
and grind the teeth, and puff the cheeks, and set the 20 
eyes a goggling ; and the thing is only ridiculous after 
all, not the least dreadful, for there is no dread in their 
hearts. Pensiveness ; amazement ; often deepest grief 
and desolateness. All these ; but terror never. Ever- 
lasting calm in the presence of all fate ; and joy such as 25 
they could win, not indeed in a perfect beauty, but in 
beauty at perfect rest ! A kind of art this, surely, to be 
looked at, and thought upon sometimes with profit, even 
in these latter days. 

176. To be looked at sometimes. Not continually, and 30 
never as a model for imitation. For you are not Greeks ; 
but, for better or worse, English creatures ; and cannot 
do, even if it were a thousand times better worth doing, 



266 THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

anything well, except what your English hearts shall 
prompt, and your English skies teach you. For all good 
art is the natural utterance of its own people in its own day. 
But also, your own art is a better and brighter one than 
5 ever this Greek art was. Many motives, powers, and in- 
sights have been added to those elder ones. The very 
corruptions into which we have fallen are signs of a subtle 
life, higher than theirs was, and therefore more fearful in 
its faults and death. Christianity has neither superseded, 

lo nor, by itself, excelled heathenism ; but it has added its 
own good, won also by many a Nemean contest in dark 
valleys, to all that was good and noble in heathenism ; and 
our present thoughts and work, when they are right, are 
nobler than the heathen's. And we are not reverent 

15 enough to them, because we possess too much of them. 
That sketch of four cherub heads from an EngHsh girl, 
by Sir Joshua Reynolds, at Kensington, is an incom- 
parably finer thing than ever the Greeks did. Ineffably 
tender in the touch, yet Herculean in power; innocent, 

20 yet exalted in feeling ; pure in color as a pearl ; reserved 
and decisive in design, as this Lion crest, — if it alone 
existed of such, — if it were a picture by Zeuxis,° the only 
one left in the world, and you build a shrine for it, and 
were allowed to see it only seven days in a year, it alone 

25 would teach you all of art that you ever needed to know. 
But you do not learn from this or any other such work, be- 
cause you have not reverence enough for them, and are 
trying to learn from all at once, and from a hundred other 
masters besides. 

30 177. Here, then, is the practical advice which I would 
venture to deduce from what I have tried to show you. 
Use Greek art as a first, not a final, teacher. Learn to 
draw carefully from Greek work ; above all, to place forms 



ATHENA IN THE HEART 267 

correctly, and to use light and shade tenderly. Never 
allow yourselves black shadows. It is easy to make things 
look round and projecting; but the things to exercise 
yourselves in are the placing of the masses, and the model- 
ling of the lights. It is an admirable exercise to take a s 
pale wash of color for all the shadows, never reinforcing it 
everywhere, but drawing the statue as if it were in far 
distance, making all the darks one flat pale tint. Then 
model from those into the lights, rounding as well as you 
can, on those subtle conditions. In your chalk drawings, ic 
separate the lights from the darks at once all over ; then 
reinforce the darks slightly where absolutely necessary, 
and put your whole strength on the lights and their limits. 
Then, when you have learned to draw thoroughly, take 
one master for your painting, as you would have done 15 
necessarily in old times by being put into his school (were 
J to choose for you, it should be among six men only — 
Titian, Correggio, Paul Veronese, Velasquez, Reynolds, 
or Holbein). ° If you are a landscapist, Turner must be 
your only guide (for no other great landscape painter has 20 
yet lived) ; and having chosen, do your best to understand 
your own chosen master, and obey him, and no one else, 
till you have strength to deal with the nature itself round 
you, and then, be your own master, and see with your own 
eyes. If you have got masterhood or sight in you, that is 25 
the way to make the most of them ; and if you have neither, 
you will at least be sound in your work, prevented from 
immodest and useless effort, and protected from vulgar 
and fantastic error. 

And so I wish you all, good speed, and the favor of 30 
Hercules and of the Muses ; and to those who shall best 
deserve them, the crown of Prrsley first and then of the 
Laurel. ° 



NOTES 

THE CROWN OF WILD OLIVE 

INTRODUCTION 

RuBKiN took "extreme pains" (see footnote, § 1) with 
'this revised Introduction. For this reason it seems worth 
while to give, in the following notes, the more important 
variants. 

1 : 5. Wandel. '' The Springs of Wandel " is the title 
of the first chapter of Ruskin's Prceterita. 

1 : 9. "Giveth rain from heaven." A combination of Job 
V, 10 : "... who giveth rain upon the earth," and Is. 
Iv, 10 : "... as the rain cometh down from heaven." 
See also Acts xiv, 17. 

1 : 12. Confessed. " No sweeter homes ever hallowed the 
heart of the passer-by with their pride of peaceful gladness 
— fain-hidden — yet fully confessed." Note the alliteration, 
and observe the extent to which Ruskin uses this embellish- 
ment in these lectures. 

1 : 13. 1870. Instead of this date, the first edition, 
1866, had: "or, until a few months ago, remained." 

1 : 16. Pisan Maremma. Pisa, city and province of 
Italy, part of the former grand duchy of Tuscany. 3/a- 
rSmma, Italian, corrupted from marittima, country by the 
seashore, from mare, the sea. Also known as Tuscan 
Maremma. — Campagna. Town in Salerno, Italy. 

1 : 17. Torcellan. Torcella, a small island near Venice. 

2 : 8. Chalcedony. A variety of quartz, the name of 
which is derived from Chalcedon, a town in Asia Minor. 

269 



270 NOTES 

2 : 9. Grenouillette. See French Dictionary. 

2:13. Shreds of old metal. Compare potsherd, shard, and 
shear d. 

2:14. Which, having . . . they. Originally: "they hav- 
ing . . . thus." 

2 : 15, Dig into the ground. Bury. 

2 : 21. Gentler hands. People of more refinement. 

2 : 23. Scoria. Slag, dross. 

2 : 28. The accumulation of indolent years. What figure 
of speech? 

2 : 33. Porch of Bethesda. John v, 2-4. Bethesda 
(House of Mercy) had five porches. " In these lay a great 
multitude of impotent folk, of blind, halt, withered, waiting 
for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at 
a certain season in the pool, and troubled the water : whoso- 
ever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in 
was made whole of whatsoever disease he had." 

3:1. I suppose. Not in the original. Does this indi- 
cate a change in Ruskin's attitude towards the villagers? 
3:8. In so wise manner. In such a way, or manner. 

3 : 15. Freehold. A legal term. See Dictionary. 
3 : 21. Dead ground. Unproductive, idle. 

3 : 24. Open-handed. Is this meant for a pun? 

3:25. Habitually scatters. Originall}': "habitually scat- 
ters from its presence." 

3:30. Perilous. Originally: "deadly." 

3 : 31. Partly grievous and horrible. Originally : "partly 
fierce and exhaustive." 

4:3. This paragraph was the last sentence of the original 
paragraph 2. 

5:1. Percentage. Three years before Ruskin invari- 
ably wrote ''per-centage." 

5:3, By-ways. Originally : "bye-ways." 



NOTES 271 

5 : 10. Filchings. Things, commonly of small value, 
stolen or taken privately. 

5 : 12. The original § 4 embraced the present §§ 5, 6, and 7. 
— Croydon publican. This adaptation is not from Luke (v, 
27), whose publican, Levi, was a tax-collector; but from 
Matthew (xi, 19) and Luke (vii, 34), who speak of "the Son 
of Man" as being called '' a wine-bibber, a friend of pub- 
licans and sinners." 

5 : 15. Out-rail. Note the pun. 

5 : 17. Both are. as to their relative attractiveness, just 
where they were before. Ruskin improves this by omitting 
an ironical pun that appeared between "attractiveness" 
and "just," in the original : "to customers of taste." 

5 : 19. The amateurs of railings. Originally: "customers 
of taste." Has Ruskin simply substituted one pun for 
another? 

6 : 22. Precisely what the capitalist has gained. Origi- 
nally not italicized. What does the change indicate? 

5 : 29. Blackmail. Compare Unto this Last, § 45. ( Unto 
this Las/ was written in 1860. ten years before the revision 
of this Introduction, and six years before the writing of 
Crown of WHd Olive.) 

5 : 30. Cozening. Deceiving, or cheating, by claiming 
relationship — cousining. — Reiver. Compare reave, be- 
reave, rob. — Quartered. Lodged, sheltered. 

5 : 33. Robber. What is the difference between a robber 
and a burglar? 

6:8. The proceeding. Originally: "it." — Political econ- 
omy. Ruskin defines true political economy ( Unto this 
Last, § 28) as follows : " Political economy (the economy 
of a State, or of a citizen) consists simply in production, 
preservation, and distribution, at fittest time and place, of 
useful or pleasurable things." 



272 NOTES 

6 : 20. No excuse for the theft. Compare Unto this Last, 
§§ 43, 54. 

6 : 21. Turnpike. Riiskin means a turnstile, or a toll- 
gate. In America the turnpike is the roadway. 

6 : 26. Out-facing. Is this intended for a pun of the 
"out-rail" type (§ 5)? 

7:7. Which. Would ''that" be better? "Ruskin, 
at this time [Modern Painters, Part I, Section 1] and ever 
after, used 'which' where 'that' would be both more correct 
and less inelegant. He probably had the habit from him 
who did more than any other to disorganize the English 
language — that is, Gibbon." — Mrs. Mynell, John Ruskin, 
New York, 1890, p. 16. 

7:11. Destroy. Originally not italicized. 

7 : 14. Final inconvenience. In addition to what we 
have here, this paragraph originally closed with the sentence, 
" So that, conclusively, in political as in household economy 
the great question is, not so much what j'^ou have in your 
pocket, as what you buy with it, and do with it." Compare 

Unto this Last, § 72. 

7:15. The original § 5 embraced the present §§ 8, 9, 10, 

11, and 12. 

7:17. Statements laughed at for years before they are 

examined or believed. Compare Joseph Salyards, Idothea, 

I, 776: — 

"We burn the martyr, then adopt the creed." 

7 : 24. Intrinsic. Not in the original. 

7:26. "Practical." Originally used, but not quoted. 

7 : 28. Modern school of economists. Reference to 
J. Stuart Mill, his forebears and followers in economics. 
David Ricardo (1772-1823) was not in sympathy with the 
w^orking classes. Mill (1806-1873), in his doctrines concern- 
ing the experiences of the soul of man, did not please Ruskin. 



XOTES 273 

It is interesting to trace the influence of Adam Smith's 
Wealth of Nations (1766) in the works of Ricardo, Mill, 
and Riiskin. Read Ruskin's ''Ad Valorem," the fourth 
and last essay in Unto this Last. See also Mrs. Mynell, 
John Rusk in, New York, 1900. p. 150 ff. 

7:33. Labor. Originally : "labors." 

8 : 2. Heads of the following lectures. Note in this para- 
graph the terms : — 

Operatives Merchants Soldiers 

Manufacture Selling Killing 

Craftsmen Salesmen Swordsmen 

out of which he evolves his simple titles : — 
Work Traffic War 

8 : 10. Chiefly "desired. Originally followed by : " (as I 
have just said)." 

8 : 22. Face the difficulty. Originally followed by : "just 
spoken of." 

8 : 27. Then. Not in original. 

8 : 30. " What you say,'* etc. Not originally included 
with quotation marks. 

8 : 31. Unbelievers. Un- not originally italicized. 
8:34. Shake off the dust. Matt, x, 14; Mark vi, 11; 

but Ruskin probably has in mind Luke ix, 5; Acts xiii, 51. 
9:1. I had got to say. Improve this expression. 

9 : 3. Intractable question. Originally : '' Intractable part 
of the subject." 

9 : 14. Property . . . invisible. Luke xvii, 20 : "The 
kingdom of God comcth not with observation." 

9 : 21. More blessed, etc. Allusion to Acts xx, 35. 

9:28. Of first forward youth. Originally: "of my first 
forward j^outh." 



274 NOTES 

9:29. To believe anything. Originally: "of what, in 
.such matters I thought myself." 

9 : 31. I take for the time his creed. Possibly suggested 
by 1 Cor. ix, 22. 

10:4. Forty years. See PrcEterita, pp. 1, 2, 52-58. 
When this lecture was written (1866), Ruskin was only 
about forty-five; but his statement is not very wide of the 
mark. 

10 : 8. Fetish. Also fetich. A material substance used 
as a charm by certain African tribes, as the rabbit's foot 
among uneducated American negroes. — Talisman. A magi- 
cal image, usually engraved on stone or metal. See Spenser's 
Faerie Queene, Canto I, stanza 2, line 5. 

10 : 17. Life . . . meat . . . body . . . raiment. Matt. 
vi, 25; Luke xii, 23. 

10:18. Without being accused of fanaticism. Originally: 
"without accusation or fanaticism." 

10:21. After all these things. Matt, vi, 52. 
Section 13. § 6 of the original. 

11 : 7. All things ended in order for his sleep, or left in 
order for his awakening. Originally : "all things in order 
for his sleep, or in readiness for his awakening." When 
Hezekiah was "sick unto death . . . Isaiah, the prophet, 
. . . said unto him . . . Set thine house in order." — Is. 
xxxviii, 1; 2 Kings xx, 1. 

Section 14. § 7 of the original. 

11:10. End. Originally: "put." 

11 : 14. Rooms in their Father's house . . . mansions. 
John xiv, 2 : "In my Father's house are many man- 
sions." 

11 : 16. Live at court. Originally : "Live at Court." 

11 : 18. "Desire to depart, and be with Christ." Phil, i 
23 : ". . . desire to depart, and to be with Christ." 
T 



NOTES 275 

11 : 27. Drunkard. Is. xxii, 13: ". . . eating flesh and 
drinking wine : let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we 
shall die." 

11:29. Device in the grave. Ecd. ix, 10: "... there 
is no . . . device, ... in the grave, whither thou goest." 

12 : 6. " What a man soweth that shall he also reap." 
GaL vi, 7 : " Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also 
reap." 

12 : 8. Pestilence . . . darkness. Ps. xci, 6 : "... the 
pestilence that walketh in darkness." 

Section 15. The eighth and final paragraph of the original 
Preface embraced the fifteenth and sixteenth paragraphs 
of this Introduction. 

12 : 10. Offence. Possibly an allusion to Rom. xiv, 20, 
21. 

12 : 13. Which. Or "that"? 

12 : 16. Hill of Mars. Acts xvii, 22 : " Paul stood in the 
midst of Mars' hill " and addressed the men of Athens. — 
Eumenides. The Furies (Alecto, Tisiphone, and Megara), 
who punished with stinging remorse those who had escaped 
or defied public justice. 

12 : 17. Might not a preacher . . . say to them. In 
place of this, Ruskin said, originally: "I would fain, if 
I might offencelessly, have spoken to them as if none others 
heard; and have said thus:" Does the change strengthen 
the appeal? 

12 : 29. Fruit of righteousness. Compare S Cor. ix, 
10. 

12 : 31. Iniquity . . . remembered no more. Heb. viii, 
12 : "Their iniquities will I remember no more." 

13 : 1. You. Originally not italicized. 

13 : 4. Before the moth. Easier than you can crush the 
moth. 



276 NOTES 

13 : 6. Fails for lack of food. See Ps. xxxiv, 10; Lam. ii, 

11, 12. 

"Sucking children in the street do die. 

When they had cried unto their mothers, 'Where 
Shall we find bread and drink?' they fainted there." 

— Donne, The Lamentations, etc., 132-134. 

13 : 7. Whisper . . . dust. Possibly suggested by Is. 
xxix, 4. 

13 : 9. Lie down ... in the dust. See J oh xx, 11. — 
Worms cover you. Job vii, 5. 

13 : 17. More prompt . . . more niggardly. Originally : 
"readier . . . and niggardly." 

13 : 21. Well understanding your act. Originally: "well 
understood." 

13 : 23. When brought into these curt limits. Originally: 
"in these curt limits." — Curt. Latin curtus, short, very 
brief. What additional meaning has this word? 

13 : 24. Fever fit. " After life's fitful fever he sleeps well." 
— Macbeth, III, ii, 23. 

13 : 30. Are health and heaven to come? Then. Not 
in the original. 

13 : 32. Crowns. First suggestion of the title of the three 
essays, or lectures. 

13 : 33. Though. Not in the original. 

14 : 2. No. Not italicized in the original, 

14 : 3. But your Palace-inheritance. Not in original. 

14:7. Rest which remaineth. Heb. iv, 9: "There re- 
maineth therefore a rest for the people of God." 

14 : 12. The heathen, in their saddest hours, thought 
not so. Originally: "The heathen, to whose creed you 
have returned, thought not so." Suggest reasons for the 
change. 

14 : 13. Crown. Second suggestion of title. 



NOTES 277 

14 : 16. [Crown of] Wild Olive. Title complete, but not 
fully explained. 

14 : 18. It should have been of gold. See title-page. 

14 : 23. [Crown of] Wild Olive, mark you . . . gray leaf 
and thornset stem; . . . sharp embroidery. Title com- 
plete and explained. See The Queen of the Air, § 38: 
" Hercules plants the wild olive, for its shade, on the course 
of Olympia, and it thenceforward gives the Olympic crown 
of consummate honor and rest." 

14 : Note. fieXtrdeaaa, d^dXuv y ivcKev. Pindar, Olymp., I, 

157-159: — 

" 6 VLKdv bi \oLirbv ^Lotov 

exet fxeXiroecrcrav 
aedXcjv y ^veKCp/^ 

"The victor for the rest of his life has delicious (honey 
sweet) tranquillity (fair, sunny weather) on account of the 
games." 

15 : 3. May yet be your riches. Originally preceded by 
"these." 

15 : 5. Life that now is . . . that which is to come. 
1 Tim. iv, 8: " Godliness is profitable unto all things, having 
promise of the life that now is, and of that which is to come." 

LECTURE I 

Work 

The Crown of Wild Olive was written: "Traffic," 1864; 
"Work and Play," — being the present "Work," — and 
"War," 1865; first published in 1866. The Introduction 
(Preface) was revised in 1870. (See p. 1, § 1.) This lecture 
seems to have been revised, or the revision retouched, after 
1873. (See footnote, p. 30, § 26.) The revised text is here 



278 NOTES 

used because it is better. The more important variants are 
given. 

17:4. Plain questions. 1866: "plain but necessary 
questions." 

18 : 25. Are there necessarily upper classes? necessarily 
lower? 1866: "Are there really upper classes, — are there 
lower?" 

18 : 28. I pray ... to forgive. 1866 : "I pray those of 
you who are here to forgive." Note the narrowing and 
the strengthening of the appeal. 

19:8. Ask them what they think. 1866: "Ask them, 
also as representing a great multitude, what they think." 
19:12. Your employers. 1866: "those classes." 

19 : 13. Idle classes. Read Robert Louis Stevenson's 
essay, "An Apology for Idlers." 

Section 20. The original has no footnote. " Original," 
here and hereafter, means 1866. 

19 : 27. Play marbles. An appeal to the interest of all 
men who have been boys. 

20 : 6. [How little wise in this!] Not in the original. 

20 : 8. Among them. Not in the original. 
20:10. Looks. 1866: "has a tendency to look." 
20:22. No worldly distinction. 1866: "no class dis- 
tinction." 

21 : 22. Definition. Note carefully, in this paragraph, 
the definitions of play and work, and the illustrations. 

21 : 28. As you call it. Judging from this expression, 
and from the reference to football, in the next paragraph, 
was Ruskin "gamesome"? 

Section 24. Is Ruskin wholly serious in the first half of 
this paragraph, and wholly sensible in the second? 

22 : 17. "Well, I'll get more." It was said of some of 
our cotton-planters, before the Civil War, "They buy 



NOTES 279 

negroes, to make cotton, to get money, to buy more negroes, 
to make more cotton, to get more money, to buy still more 
negroes, etc." 

23 : 3. Or filling both. This was originally followed by: 
" Collecting monej^ is by no means the same thing as making 
it; the tax-gatherer's house is not the Mint; and much of 
the apparent gain (so called), in commerce, is only a form 
of taxation on carriage and exchange." Does not Ruskin 
here confuse money-manufacturing and money-earning? 

23 : 8. And the resultant demoralization of ourselves, our 
children, and our retainers. Not in the original. 

23 : 9. Beautiful. Is Ruskin sincere? 

23:15. Gambling. Originally followed by: "By no 
means a beneficial or recreative game." 

23 : 19. Brace. A pair, a couple. Now rarely applied to 
persons except with contempt. 

23 : 21. Many mansions. Reference to ^Tohn xiv, 2. 

23 : 23. Four-square city . . . measuring reeds. Rev. 
xxi, 16: "And the city lieth four-square . . . and he 
measured the city with the golden reed." 

23 : 25. By this nation. Originally followed by : "which 
has set itself as it seems, literally to accomplish, word fbr 
word, or rather fact for word, in the persons of those poor 
whom its Master left to represent him, what that Master 
said of himself — that the foxes and birds had homes but 
he had none [Matt. \"iii, 20]. Notice those poor whom its 
Master." . . . The footnote has been added. 

23 : 28. Not the cheapest of games. Originally followed 
by: "I saw a brooch at a jeweller's in Bond Street a fort- 
night ago, not an inch wide, and without any singular jewel 
in it, yet worth 3000 £." 

24 : 9. Fashions you have set. How have these fashions 
been set? 



280 NOTES 

24 : 11. Or as Chaucer calls it "all toslittered," though 
not for "queintise." Not in the original. The reference 
is to The Romaunt of the Rose, line 840. 

24:21. Imagination. Originally followed by : "the facts 
of it not always so pleasant." 

24 : 27. Bats and balls. Guns and bullets. 

25 : 10. Philologists. Ruskin here means one who 
comprehends the origin and meaning of words. Ruskin 
himself is somewhat of a philologist: see "Traffic," para- 
graphs 63, 69. 

25 : 12. Birmingham. The chief manufacturing city 
of England. Spelled Bermingeham in Doomsday Book. 
Ruskin implies that play in Birmingham means work. 

25 : 13. Baden-Baden. A place of fashionable resort 
in Germany, in a valley near the Black Forest. Baden, 
in German, means bathing, balneation. Ruskin implies 
that flay in Baden-Baden means play. 

25 : 20. We have piped unto you, etc. Matt, xi, 16, 17; 
Luke vii, 32. How can one know that Ruskin refers to 
Luke? 

.25:28. Jelly-fish. 1866: "sucking-fish." 

26 : 1. And cease to translate. 1866 : "and enough 
respect for what we regard as inspiration, as not to think, 
'Son . . . means Fool. . . .' " 

26 : 2. Vineyard. Matt, xxi, 28. An exact quotation. 

26 : 7. Dives and Lazarus. Luke xvi, 19, 20 : "... a 
certain rich man ... a certain beggar named Lazarus." 
Latin dives, rich. The name "Dives" does not appear in 
the English Bible. Vulgate, Luke xvi, 19 : " Homo quidam 
erat dives. . . ." Chaucer gets his name for a leper, 
"lazar," from Lazarus. See The Prologue, line 242. 

26 : 12. This chance extract. In this lecture, as delivered, 
and as first printed, Ruskin gave two "chance extracts," 



NOTES 281 

which he cut from two papers that lay on his breakfast 
table on the same morning, the 25th of November, 1864. 
The first of these extracts, which Ruskin calls "common- 
place," he omits from the revised essay. It is about a 
rich Russian, "Count Teufelskine." Ruskin manufactured 
the name, presumably from the German Teufel, devil, 
and the English skin. Count Devilskin, or a Count who 
would skin the devil. This Count, breakfasting in Paris, 
was charged fifteen francs for two peaches (out of season). 
"Peaches scarce, I presume?" querried the Count. "No, 
sir," replied the waiter, "but Teufelskines are." 

26 : 23. Bone-picker. Such as the men who sing, in the 
back alleys of American cities, 

"Any rags, any bones, any bottles to-day? 
Same ol' rag-man comin' this way." 

The bones are sold to a junk-dealer, who, in turn, sells them 
to fertilizer factories, or to sugar refineries. 

27 : 8. Poor Law Act. A law pertaining to the support 
or relief' of the poor. See article on "Poor Laws," in any 
good cyclopaedia. 

27 : 10. Gnawing flesh . . . sucking bones. Proeterita, 
p. 98 : " Mause [the kitchen servant of Rose Terrace, the 
home of Ruskin's childhood] had been nearly starved to 
death when she was a girl, and had literally picked the bones 
out of cast-out dust-heaps to gnaw." 

27:15. Jewish Lazarus . . . rich man's table. — Luke 
xvi, 20. 

28 : 3. Rapine. Plundering; seizing and carrying away 
by force. 

28:9. Are earning. 1866 :" earn." — By those who 
already possess it, and only use it to gain more. 1866 : " by 
those who levy or extract it." 



282 NOTES 

28 : 25. Ten years without it. See "Traffic," paragraph 
75. 

28 : 31. Clerg5mian's object. Compare Chaucer's "povre 
Persoun," The Prologue, lines 477-529. 

28 : 33. Doctors . . . like fees. Compare Chaucer's " Doc- 
tour of Phisik/' The Prologue, 'iU-UA:. 

29 : 14. You cannot serve two masters. Matt, vi, 24; 
Luke xvi, 13. 

29 : 20. " Least erected fiend that fell." Evidently Ruskin 
quotes from memory. 

"Mammon, the least erected spirit that fell 
From heaven," 

— Milton, Paradise Lost, I, 679-680. 

29 : 24. King of Kings. Rev. xix, 16 : "And he hath on 
his vesture and on his thigh a name written, King of Kings, 
AND Lord of Lords." 

29 : 33. Judas bargain. Matt, xxvi, 14, 15; Mark xiv, 
10, 11; Luke xxii, 3, 4, 5; John xviii, 2. Only Matthew 
mentions the thirty pieces of silver. 

30 : 1. Judas . . . Iscariot. Judas, Graecized form of 
Judah, means praise. Iscariot, a man of Kerioth (Josh, xv, 
25). Judas Iscariot is mentioned in Matt, x, 4; xxvi, 14; 
Mark iii, 19; xiv, 10; Luke vi, 16; xxii^ 3: John vi, 71; 
xiii, 26. 

30 : 5. He never thought He would be killed. 1866 : " He 
didn't want Him to be killed." 

30 : 13. Helpless to understand Christ. 1866 : " He didn't 
understand Christ." 

30 : 17. Christ would come out of it well enough. See 
W. W. Story, A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem, pp. 112- 
114. 

30 : 31. Carrying the bag. John xii, 6. 



NOT£S 283 

31 : 5. Cunningest. Ruskin often forms such superlatives 
by adding -est, instead of using most. See § 39 : "ad- 
visablest," " profitablest." 

31 : 15. Bags and crags have just the same result on rags. 
Note the epigrammatic nature of this sentence. Would 
"effect on" be better than "result on"? 

31 : 18. One great principle. Originally followed by: "I 
have to assert." — You will find it unfailing. 1866: "You 
will find it quite undisputably true." Is the change for the 
better? Why? 

32 : 4. Value and use. Originally followed by : "This is 
the true law of life." 

32:29. Bishop Colenso. John William Colenso (1814- 
1883), Bishop of Natal, South Africa. Ruskin refers to 
Colcnso's The Pentateuch and Book of Joshua Critically 
Examined. 

32 : 31. Primary orders. This paragraph formerly ended 
as follows : '' . . . primary orders; and as if, for most 
of the rich men of England at this moment, it were indeed 
to be desired, as the best thing at least for them, that the 
Bible should not be true, since against them these words are 
written in it : 'The rust of your gold and silver shall be a 
witness against you, and shall eat your flesh, as it were fire ' 
[Jas. V, 3]." 

32 : 34. Hand . . . head. A modified designation of 
"lower class," and "upper class." 

33 : 11. Dignity of humanity. Originally there followed 
this sentence : "That is a grand old proverb of Sancho 
Panza's, ' Fine words butter no parsnips,' and I can tell 
you that, all over England just now, you workmen are buy- 
ing a great deal too much butter at that dairy." By 
"dairy," Ruskin means the English Parliament. See para- 
graphs 41, 42. Sancho Panza is the counterpart of the 



284 NOTES 

hero in Cervantes's Don Quixote. Sancho means spindle- 
shanks, and Panza means paunch. 

33 : 15. Collier's helm. The helm of a vessel engaged 
in the coal trade. — Lee-shore. The shore on the lee side of 
a vessel. See lee and windward. 

33 : 20. Reading books, classing butterflies, painting 
pictures. Is there nothing else a gentleman can do? 

33 : 28. The hand's the ignoble? Do you agree with 
this? 

33 : 31. ''In the sweat of thy face thou shalt eat bread." 
Gen. iii. 19 : "In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." 
Note the diflference in the order of the words. Is there a 
difference in the meaning? 

34 : 9. *' Blessed are the dead . . . they rest from their 
labors." Rev. xiv, 13 : "They rest," should be, "they may 
rest." May not the /lea/f -laborer hope for a holiday, be 
"blessed," and rest from his labors? 

34 : 15. Laborious friends. 1866: ''working friends." 
See § 42. 

34 : 16. Must. Originally not italicized. 

34 : IS. Doing. Being done. Compare : The house is 
building. 

34:23. Soft work. Would not "easy work" sound 
better? "Soft work" is at least suggestive of the slang 
phrase, "A soft snap." 

34 : 25. Because we cannot help ourselves. Compare 
Johnson's Rassclas, Chapter XVI, next to the last paragraph. 

34 : 31. Disorderly — ordered. Scrambling — soldierly; 
doggish — human. Note the contrasts. 

34 : 32. A lawful or " loyal" way. 1866 : " a lawful way." 

34 : 33. The labor that kills — the labor of war. The 
sword. 

35 : 2. The labor that feeds. The plough. 



NOTES 285 

35 : 10. Gentlemail . . . justice. Is Ruskin consistent? 
Does he not here admit that the rough hand-worker, who 
does justice to the gentle head-worker, is a ''gentleman"; 
and that the gentle head-worker, who is unjust to the 
rough hand-worker, is a "rough man"? 

35 : 14. But they never . . . ever ask. Is this "ever" a 
slip, or does it give emphasis? " But they never ever ask," 
is suggestive of Riley's Hoosier verse. 

35:19. "Do justice and judgment." G^en. xviii, 19. Also 
mentioned in 2 Sam. viii. 15; 1 Chrofu xviii, 14; Jer. xxiii, 
5; Ps. Ixxxix, 14. "Judgment and justice" : 7s. ix, 7. 
" Do justice" : Ps. Ixxxii, 3; Is. Ivi, 1. " Execute justice" : 
Jer. xxiii, 5. 

35:21. Sing psalms. Ps. xlvii, 1; Ixvi, 1; Ixxxi, 1; 
xcii, 1; xcv, 1; xcvi, 1; xcvii, 1; xcviii, 1; c, 1; cv, 
2, etc. 

35 : 22. Pray when you need. Matt, vi, 8, 32; Luke xii, 
30; Phil, iv, 19; Heb. iv, 16. 

35 : 29. He likes to hear. Compare Matt, vii, 11; Luke 
xi, 13. 

36 : 2. It doesn't call that serving its father. But what 
does the father call it? 

36 : 4. Most probably it is nothing. Fie, Fie, Ruskin! 
Caesar had some fear of Cassius, because " he loves no plays 

. . he hears no music." (Julius Ccesar, I, ii, 203-204.) 
Even the conspirator, Brutus, loved "a strain or two" of a 
"sleepy tune," and was gentle to the boy. (IV, iii, 255- 
274.) 

36 : 8. Performed. Xote the punning explanation. — at 
so-and-so o'clock. 1866: "at eleven o'clock." Suggest a 
reason for the change. 

36 : 13. Charity. Does Ruskin mean almsgiving, or 
love? Note the word "love" in the paragraph below. 



286 NOTES 

36 : 23. Don't love him. Would " do not love him," be 
stronger? 

36 : 27. Got. If the sense of "got" may not be spared, 
suggest a better word. — Begins at home. Compare the 
saying : "Charity begins at home." 

36 : 32. Little children . . . little boots . . . little feath- 
ers. Why the repetition of "little"? 

37 : 5, Crossing-sweeper. One who sweeps the foot- 
paths, at the intersection of streets, for small pay, and the 
privilege of begging at that place. 

37:7. You will give . . . good you are. 1866: "we 
. . . we are." 

37 : 11. God . . . for them. This sentence is not in the 
original. 

37 : 13. Justice . . . blind. How is Justice usually pic- 
tured? Why? 

37 : 25. How can she, etc. . . . You don't, because, etc. 
. . . Position in which, etc. Should Ruskin have used 
quotation marks? 

38 : 4. That's modern Christianity. Is it? Is Ruskin 
pessimistic? 

38 : 6. We shall never know . . . undone. 1866 : "How 
do you know what you have done, or are doing?" There 
are some unimportant changes in the next sentence. 

38 : 23. People . . . pay . . . for being amused or cheated. 
Southey tells the story, in his Letters of Espriella, that 
English people paid an admission fee to see a shaved 
monkey, exhibited as a fairy. 

38 : 24. Talker. Member of Parliament. See § 42. 

38 : 28. Homer . . . Iliad. Homer, the greatest epic . 
poet the world has known. It is believed that he was an 
Asiatic Greek, native of Smyrna. He is accredited with 
the authorship of the Iliad and the Odyssey, in celebration 



NOTES 287 

of the Trojan War. Homer is supposed to have lived about 
850 B.C., 400 years before the time of Herodotus the his- 
torian. The Iliad and the Odyssey are thought to be of 
ballad origin. — Dante . . . Paradise. Alighieri Dante 
(Durante), 1265-1321, the greatest of Italian poets, author 
of Divina Commedia: "Inferno"; " Purgatorio " ; " Para- 
diso." Among the later translations, in English, are those 
by Longfellow (1867, blank verse) and Charles Eliot Norton 
(Revised edition, 1902, prose). 

38 : 30. Telescope. The telescope was probably invented 
by Hans Leppershey; but Ruskin refers to Galileo Galilei, 
1564-1642. Galileo was born the day Michelangelo died, 
and died the day Isaac Newton was born. 

38 : 32. Microscope. The question as to who invented 
the microscope seems to be unanswered. Ruskin possibly 
refers to Zacharias Jansen. He cannot mean the Isle of 
Wight man, Robert Hooke, who had plenty of money when 
he died. 

39 : 2. Done for nothing. Is this true of our day? 
— Baruch. Jer. xxxvi, 32. Baruch wrote also Jeremiah's 
first roll for him. See same chapter, verse 4. 

39 : 4. St. Stephen. Acts vii, 58. 

39:6. World-father. What is meant by this? For what 
two reasons can it not mean God? 

39 : 11. Not bread; a stone. Matt, vii, 10; Luke xi, 11. 

39 : 12. To keep you quiet. Surely Ruskin offers this pun 
to please his "lower class." Compare the puns and the 
punners in the opening scene of Julius Ccesar. 

39 : 13. And tell to future ages, etc. Not in the original. 
Should not "tell" have "to" before it? 

39 : 17. Better payment. BetAveen this and "we shall 
pay," there was (1866), "someday, assuredly, more pence will 
be paid to Peter the Fisherman, and less to Peter the Pope." 



288 NOTES 

40 : 1. Children playing in the [streets]. Zech. viii, 5 : 
" And the streets of the city [Jerusalem] shall be full of boys 
and girls playing in the streets thereof/' 

40:6. Laborious friends. 1866 : ''working friends." See 
§ 37. 

40 : 9. Wise . . . and foolish work. It is e\ident that 
"wise" and "foolish" were suggested by the wise and fool- 
ish builders (Matt, vii, 24, 26), since all the Biblical refer- 
ences in the following paragraph (1866, but here omitted), 
except the one on "wages." are to this book and chapter. 

The omitted paragraph : — 

" Well, wise work is, briefly, work with God. Foolish work 
is work against God. And work done with God, which he 
will help, may be briefl}^ described as ' Putting in Order' — 
that is, enforcing God's law of order, spiritual and material, 
over men and things. The first thing you have to do, essen- 
tially; the real 'good work' is, with respect to men, to en- 
force justice, and with respect to things, to enforce tidiness, 
and fruit fulness. And against these two great human deeds 
[needs?], justice and order, there are perpetually two great 
demons contending, — the devil of iniquity, or inequity, and 
the devil of disorder, or of death; for death is only consum- 
mation of disorder. You have to fight tnese two fiends 
daily. So far as you don't fight against the fiend of iniquity, 
j'^ou work for him. You 'work iniquity' [Matt, vii, 23], and 
judgment upon you. for all your 'Lord. Lord's' [Matt, vii, 
21, 22] will be 'Depart from me, ye that work iniquity, 
[Matt, vii, 23]. And so far as 3'ou do not resist the fiend of 
disorder, 3'ou work disorder, and you yourself do the work 
of Death, which is sin, and has for its wages. Death himself . 
[/?ow. vi,23]." 

40 : 18. Fair-play . . . foul -play. No italics in the orig- 
inal. 



NOTES 289 

40 : 19. Never. 1866 : "ever." What is the diflference? 

40 : 20. And bitterer. Xot in the original, 

40 : 21. Fair-work . . . foul-work. No italics in the 
original. 

40 : 26. Loads dice. Secretly inserts lead to make the 
dice turn in a desired way. 

40 : 27. Loads scales. Would putting lead (usually shot) 
in the weight-holder of scales be loading or unloading? 

40:29. What difference does it make? 1866: "What 
does it matter? " 

40 : 31. Unless that flaw ... of the two. f866 : "The 
fault in the fabric is incomparably the worst of the two." 

41 : 2. To us who help you. Ruskin had a way of talking 
down to his audience. 

41 : 9. Right hand . . . wrong hand. Is this two puns, 
or one? 

41 :22. Exert. 1866 : "use." 

41:25. And found. 1866 : "and you found." Why 
the change? 

41 : 29. Cream. 1866 : "milk." 

42 : 2. Golden bowl at the fountain. Eccl. xii, 6. See 
also Poe's Lenore : — 

"Ah, broken is the golden bowl ! the spirit flown forever I'? 

42 :3. Life. 1866 : "blood." 

42 : 10. The whistling bullets. 1866 : " the little whistling 
bullets." 

42 : 12. Messages to many a man. 1866 : "messages 
from us to many a man." 

42 : 15. Shorten his life. Compare Julius Ccesar, III, 
i, 101, 102. 

42 : 19. Strength. Not in the original. 

42 : 24. Hold closer. What does Ruskin mean? 
u 



290 XOTES 

42 : 31. Thy kingdom come. -Ua//. vi. 10. ''The Lord's 
Prayer." 

42 : 33. God's name in vain. E.r. xx. 7. The reference 
is to tlie third oi the Fen C'oninianduients. 

43 : a. Insult. lS(Ui : •mock." 

43 : 6. With the reed, ^fa^t. xxvii. 30. 

43 : 10. The kingdom of God. etc. Luke xvii. 20, 21. 

43 : 21. Joy in the Holy Ghost. Rom. xiv. 17. 

43:21. There's one curious condition. ISOO :" there's 
just one eoiuiition." 

43 : 26. "Whosoever will not . . . shall not enter therein, 
Mark x, l."> : " Whosoever shall not, etc. " 

43 : 28. Of such is the kingdom of heaven, ^fatt. xix, 
14: Mark x. 14: Luke xviii. 10. Uuskiu does not quote 
exaetly either passagv. There are no italics, and no foot- 
note, in the original. On the statement made in the foot- 
note, see tlie some twenty-five Biblical references and allu- 
sions in the hist two paragraphs of this lecture — eighteen 
of them in tlie hist. 

44 : iv Or the earth — when it gets to be like heaven. 
Not in tlie original. 

44 : 4. But that's not so. ISOO. followed by the sentence : 
•■ There will be children there, but tiie hoary head is the crown 
[■■ if it be found in the way of righteousness." Pror. xvi, 31]." 

44 : Tv Length of days. etc. Pror. iii. 2. — Still less to 
live. Not in the original. — Babyhood. Between this, 
and the closing sentence of the present paragraph, the 
original had : "Children die but for their parent;?' sins [Does 
this agree with John ix. 1-3'.']: Cod means them to live, 
but he can't let them always [always let them?]; then they 
have their earlier place in heaven: and the little child of 
David, vainly prayed for [£ Sam. xii, lo-23. First-born and 
unnamed child of David and Bath-sheba. The next child 



NOTES 291 

of this union was Solomon.]; the little child of Jeroboam, 
killed by its mother's step on its own threshold [1 Kings xiv, 
1. 17. This child was Abijah. brother of King Nadab.]; — 
the}' will be there. But weary old David [Seventh son of 
Jesse {1 Chron. ii, 15); seven j^ears King over Judah. in He- 
bron; thirtj'-three years King of Israel, in Jerusalem {1 Kings 
ii. 11)]. and weary old Barzillai [The Gileadite of Rogelim 
{£ Sam. xvii. 27; xix. 31-39; 1 Kings ii. 7)]. having learned 
children's lessons at last, will be there too : and the one 
question for us all, young or old, is, how we have learned our 
child's lesson?" Should this sentence be followed by an 
interrogation point? 

44 : 20. Plato. A Greek philosopher, 427-347 B.C. 
Ruskin seems to be referring to the Republic of Plato, 
Book I, Chapters XVIII. XIX ff. He seems, furthermore, 
to have misunderstood Plato. 

45:4. Possible to man. In the original there follows, 
in this paragraph : "Among all the nations it is only when 
this faith is attained by them that the}' become great : 
the Jew, the Greek, and the Mohametan, agree at least in 
testifying to this. It was a deed of this absolute trust which 
made Abraham the father of the faithful [Gen. xv, 6; xvii, 
3] ; it was the declaration of the power of God as captain over 
all men, and the acceptance of a leader appointed by Him 
as commander of the faithful, which laid the foundation of 
whatever national power yet exists in the East; and the 
deed of the Greeks, which has become the t3'pe of unselfish 
and noble soldiership to all lands, and to all times, was com- 
memorated, on the tomb of those who gave their lives to 
do it, in the most pathetic, so far as I know, or can feel, of 
all human utterances : ' Oh, stranger, go and tell our people 
[the Lacedaemonian."^] that we are lying here, having obeyed 
their words.'" See Hiller's Anthologia Lyrica, Simonides 
(of Ceos), No. 78. .AJso Mj-ers's Ancient History, p. 196. 



292 NOTES 

45 : 0. Loving. 1866 : '' Loving and Generous." 

45:12. Humble. 1866 : "little." 

45 : 15. Careful for nothing. Compare Phil. iv. 6. 

45 : 18. No thought for the morrow. Reference to Matt. 

vi. ;u. 

45 : 23. Rejoiceth as a strong man. Ps. xix, 5, 

" With a ray here and a flash there, 
x\nd a shower of jewels everywhere/' 

Note tile rhythm and the rime. 

46:1. Except ye be converted. Matt, xviii, 3. 

46 : 7. Conventicle. A small and, formerly, secret, as- 
sembly for religious worship. Does Ruskin use the word 
opprobriouslj^ or merely to indicate that the worshippers 
wore Xonconformists or Dissenters? 

46 : 8. Backsliding. '' Falling from grace," — sliding 
back into sinful life. Backslidi7ig is a term used among 
the Wesleyan Methodists, and their followers ("Ranters," 
Wordsworth quotes them as being called; see the Fenwick 
note on " Peter Bell." Dowden's Wordsworth, Vol. II, p. 334) 
who do not believe in the doctrine : "Once in grace, always 
in grace." 

46 : 14. Medicine for your healing. See ^fal. iv, 2; Rev. 
xxii, 2. 

46 : 15. True wisdom for your teaching. Compare Jas. 
iii, 17. 

46 : 18. The poison of asps. Rom. iii, 13. — The sucking 
child shall play by the hole of the asp. /.s\ xi, 8 : " The suck- 
ing child shall play on the hole of the asp." 

46 : 19. Their eyes are privily set. Ps. x, 8. 

46 : 22. The weaned child shall lay his hand. etc. Is. xi; 
8 : "The weaned child shall put his hand, etc." 

46 : 25. Their feet are swift to shed blood, etc. This is a 
combination of Rom. iii. 15 and Ps. xvii, 11, 12. 



NOTES 293 

46 : 28. The wolf shall lie down with the lamb. A garbled 
paraphrase, and a quotation from Is. xi, 6. 

46 : 31. Lord of heaven and earth. Matt, xi, 25; Luke 
X, 21. 

46 : 33. He has hidden these things. Matt, xi, 25; Luke 
X, 21. Why t^hoiild liuskin have left off the quotation 
marks? 

47 : 2. Principalities and powers. See Rom. viii, 38; 
Eph. vi, 12. — As far as the east, etc. Ps. ciii, 12. 
"Transgressions removed,'' not ''sins set from" (King 
James's version). 

47 : 4. The Sun . . . rejoices. Ps. xix, 5. 

47 : 6. Sun . . . red . . . with blood. Suggested by the 
moon being turned to blood, Acts ii, 20; or by the moon be- 
coming as blood, Pev. vi, 12. See also Rev. viii, 8. 

47 : 8. Early and latter rain. '' Former and latter rain," 
Jer. v, 24; Joel iii, 23. "Latter and former," Hos. vi, 3. 
"First and latter," Dcut. xi, 14. "Latter," Job xxix. 23; 
Zech. X, 1. "The former rain in Judea was at the beginning 
of the civil year, about September or October; the latter 
rain was in Abib, or March." (Cruden.) — Red rain. Com- 
pare Ps. xi, 6; Rev. viii, 7. Ruskin's thought is more prob- 
ably suggested by the latter. 

47 : 14. Out of the mouths, etc. Ps. viii, 2. 



LECTURE II 

Traffic 

This lecture was delivered 1864; published 1866. 
The reference, 7?. to N., in these notes, is to Letters of 
John Ruskin to Charles Eliot Norton, Boston, 1905, 2 vols. 
48 : Title. Traffic. See Introduction, § 9. 



294 NOTES 

48 : 3. Exchange. A place where mercantile or pro- 
fessional men meet at stated times to transact business. 

49:1. Conditions. 1866: "circumstances." 

49 : 11. Architectural man-milliner, etc. This playful- 
ness comes in well, as a relief to the tension that must have 
been caused by his blunt beginning. 

49 : 18. All good architecture. Note this partial defi- 
nition, and the comment. 

49:26. But we need no sermons, etc. 1866: ''but 
preach no sermons to us." 

49 : 32. Tell me what you like, and I'll tell you what you 
are. A commonplace thought so briefly and beautifully 
expressed as to be worthy of memorizing. Compare the 
aphorism : "As he thinketh in his heart, so is he." Prov. 
xxiii, 7. 

50 : 3. Quartern. The fourth of a pint; a gill. 

50 : 11. A shy at the sparrows. Shy, to fling or throw 
stones sidewise with a jerk. See next paragraph. 

50 : 12. Pitch farthing. A game played by pitching 
farthings to see who can put the coin nearer, or nearest, 
to a line. A farthing, a copper coin the fourth of a penny 
in value; equal to half a cent in United States currency. 

50 : 29. Thinking of the bottle. I860 : '' thirsting for 
the bottle." 

51 : 4. Hunger and thirst after justice. Matt, v, 6 : 
" Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after right- 
eousness, etc." 

51 : 8. Rightly set liking. Fixed, adjusted, established 
appreciation. 

51 : 12. Teniers. David Teniers, the Elder (1582- 
1649), and his son David Teniers, the Younger (1610- 
1690), were both Flemish artists, of Antwerp. There was 
a third David Teniers, an artist of some note, but he died 



NOTES 295 

before attaining the rank of either his father, or his grand- 
father. Ruskin's reference may be to Teniers, the Elder, 
as the subjects of his pencil are generally public-houses, 
smoking-rooms, rustic games, and the like, done in vividly 
realistic manner. Teniers, the Younger, was a more 
prolific painter than his father, and England is said to be 
specially rich in specimens of his work; but his attention 
was more upon outdoor scenes, skies, trees, etc. See 
Modern Painters, Part I, Section I. 

51 : 20. Titian. Tiziano Vecellio, or Vecelli, 1477-1576, 
was head of the Venetian school of painters, and was him- 
self so great as to be classed with Raphael. Michelangelo, 
and Leonardo da Vinci. He was personally acquainted 
with the poet Ariosto, and painted his portrait. At, or 
about, the age of ninety-nine, Aug. 27, 1576, Titian died of 
the plague in Venice. Modern Painters, Vol. V (1860) is 
largely a matter of praise of the leaf-drawing of Titian and 
Holbein. Titian also receives high praise in The Two 
Paths (1859). — Turner. Joseph Mallard William Turner, 
1775-1851, the greatest of British landscape painters. 
Ruskin was his intimate friend for ten years, wrote De- 
fence of Turner, 1836, and planned Modern Painters with 
a view to teaching appreciation of Turner's work. 

51 :24. Delight in fine art. 1866 : "delight in art." 
52:11. Costermonger. An apple-seller; a huckster. 

See costard, in any good dictionary. — Newgate Calendar. 
A local, current almanac, containing weather forecasts, 
jokes, and receipts. 

52 : 12. Pop goes the Weasel. The refrain of a foolish 
song, far removed from the classical in style or treat- 
ment. 

52:13. Dante. See note on ''Work," § 41. Also 
R. to X., Vol. II. p. 130. — Beethoven. Ludwig van Bee- 



296 NOTES 

thoven, a world-famous composer of music; born in Bonn, 
1770; died m Vienna, 1S27. 

52 : 14. I wish you joy. Compare § 77. What does 
Ruskin mean bj'' this? 

52 : 28. Cast and hammer iron. To cast iron — also 
called '' puddling " — means to run the melted ore into sand 
moulds; to hammer iron, to hammer or roll it into sheets. 

52 : 30. Infernos. The openings at the base of the fur- 
nace, from which the white-hot iron pours into the sand- 
trench leading to the moulds. Inferno is the Italian for hell. 

53 : 2. Worlds that roll or shine. Compare Addison's 
Hymn, beginning : — 

"The spacious firmament on high," 

and containing the lines : — 

"What though in solemn silence all 
Move round the dark terrestrial ball? 

***** 
Forever singing as they shine, 
'The hand that made us is divine.'" 

53 : 7. Next neighboring nation. France. 
53 : 8. Mail. See chain mail : coat of mail. 

53 : 17. 

" They carved at the meal 

With gloves of steel. 
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr'd." 
— Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel. Canto I, stanza 4. 

Compare Scott, On the Massacre ofGlencoe, lines 25-26: — 

"The hand that mingled in the meal, 
At midniaiht drew the felon steel." 



^^OTES 297 

53 : 20. Iron armor. Armor plates ; plates of metal 
for covering ships. These plates arc now made of steel. 
The first armor-plated steam frigate in Great Britain was 
launched, 1860, four 3-ears before this lecture was delivered. 
See London Times, Dec. 29, 1S60. 

53 : 23. Ludicrous. Producing laughter without scorn 
or contempt. From Indus, pla5^ Compare pre-lude, 
inter-lude, post-hide. — Melancholy. Gloomy; literally : 
melan = black, cholly = bile. Compare Melancthon =• black 
earth. 

53:31. Fresco. Painting on plaster; originally, fresh 
painting on plaster. Italian /resco, fresh; pan fresco, hesh 
bread. What is the origin of our word frisky f 

54 : 1. Damask curtains. Curtains with flowers and 
rich designs, originally from Damascus. 

54 : 11. Spring guns. A spring gun is a gun so arranged 
that when an intruder comes in contact with a string or 
wire attached to the trigger, the gun fires in the direction 
of the disturbance. 

54 : 14. Fifteen millions a year. What would Ruskin 
think now? France, 1907, spent $253,000,000 in her 
" traps," — Army and Na\y; the United States of America, 
1908, $207,000,000. England, 1909, is spending $308- 
800.000. 

54 : IS. Bedlam. A place for the insane; a madhouse. 
Compare Bethlehem. Ruskin. who was not in sympathy 
with either side in the Civil War. wrote to Professor Charles 
Eliot Norton, 6th August. 1S64, "... you are living 
peaceably in Bedlam." R. to X., Vol. II, p. 146. 

54 : 19. Pantomime. Representing in mute actions ; 
imitating without words. 

54 : 22. Vermilion. A brilliant scarlet pigment com- 
posed of the sulphide of mercury, HgS. The best ver- 



298 NOTES 

milion comes from China. See Matthew Arnold's Sohrab 
and Rustum, lines 669-678. 

54 : 26. Cricketing. Cricket, an English game, played 
with balls, bats, and wickets. See " Work," § 23. 

54 : 29. Armstrongs. Wrought iron, breech-loading can- 
non, named for the inventor, an Englishman, Sir William 
Armstrong. 

54 : 33. Not . . . neither. One of Ruskin's peculiarities 
of idiom, suggestive of Shakespeare influence. See the 
Merchant of Venice, I, iii, 162, and elsewhere. — Black 
eagles. The flag of Austria. 

55:2. Farther. Ruskin is careless in using "farther" 
for "further." What is the difference? 

55 : 4. Soldiership of early Greece. Ruskin does not 
refer to "vice" of the early times of Ancient Greece, but to 
the period approximating 404-352 B.C. He may have 
reference to the " virtue " of the Heroic Age. 

55 : 5. Sensuality of late Italy. The period of its Re- 
naissance architecture. Sec § 65. — The visionary religion 
of Tuscany. See article on " Florence," in an encyclopaedia. 

55 : 6. Venice. A famous city of Italy, "The bride of the 
Adriatic," built on a cluster of marshy islands on the north- 
west border of the Adriatic Sea. 

55 : 8. I have done it elsewhere before now. " Elsewhere " 
refers to other writings (see § 65), and to other places : 
he had been delivering lectures and addresses more than 
ten years. 

55 : 14. Gothic. A style of architecture with pointed 
arches, steep roofs, large windows, and high walls; the pre- 
vailing type of architecture in western Europe, 1200-1475. 

55 : 17. Phenomenon. A strange, unusual occurrence. 

55 : 19. Italian style. Read the articles on Grecian, 
Roman, and Italian Architecture, in any good encyclopaedia. 



NOTES 299 

65 : 21. Cathedral of Antwerp. Antwerp is one of the 
chief commercial cities of Belgium. Her Cathedral is one 
of the noblest structures in the world. It is 500 feet long 
and 240 feet wide; the lofty spire is in keeping with its 
Gothic style of architecture. 

55 : 22. Hotel de Ville at Brussels. Brussels is the capital 
of Belgium. The Hotel de Ville, located in the Grand 
Place, is a Gothic structure erected in the beginning of the 
fifteenth century. Its pyramid tower, 364 feet high, is sur- 
mounted by a statue of St. Michael, the patron saint of 
Belgium. — Inigo Jones . . . Italian Whitehall. Inigo Jones 
(about 1572-16.31) studied architecture in France, Ger- 
many, and Italy, introducing the style of Palladio into 
England. Whitehall is considered his masterpiece. He 
was employed by James I. in arranging the scenery for 
Ben Jonson's Masques. Jonson afterwards satirized Jones 
in his Bartholomew Fair. 

55 : 23. Sir Christopher Wren ... St. Paul's. Sir 
Christopher Wren, 1632-1723, was England's most re- 
nowned architect. He designed many of the most notable 
buildings of London : the Royal Exchange, Custom House, 
Temple Bar, etc. The restored St. Paul's he designed on 
the model of St. Peter's, at Rome. 

55 : 32. Frankincense. A precious gum. See Ex. xxx, 
34; Lev. ii, 1, 15; v, 11; Num. v, 15; 1 Chron. ix, 29; 
Neh. xiii, 5, 9. 

56 : 11 . " This is the house of God, etc." Gen. xxviii, 17 : 
"This is none other but the house of God, and this is the 
gate of heaven." The quotation is given more accurately 
later in this paragraph; but there Ruskin puts in "surely." 

56 : 14. A boy leaves his father's house, etc. This is a 
paraphrase of Jacob's journey to the home of his uncle, 
Laban. See Gen. xxviii. 



300 NOTES 

56 : 16. Wolds. Forests; woods; the word is now little 
used except in poetry. Compare the German, Wald. — 
To cross the wolds. 1866 : " to cross the wolds of West- 
moreland." — Carlisle. On a map trace this imaginary- 
English boy's trip from Bradford to Carlisle, via Hawes 
and Brough. 

56 : 18. Moors. Wild, waste land. See also morass and 
heath. The combination "wild moors" is much used by 
English poets. 

56 : 19. Boggy. Wet, spongy, mirey. Compare Peat 
Bogs of Ireland. 

56 : 26. Angels of God are seen ascending. 1866 : ''angels 
of God are ascending." 

56 : 33. Torrent-bitten. Poetic expression, meaning 
furrowed by the waters of many rains. Compare hunger- 
bitten, Job. xviii, 12. 

57 : 4. Ready for it always. Reference to Matt, xxv, 13; 
Mark xiii, 33; Lvke xii, 40. 

57 : 6. You can guide the lightning. Reference to the 
lightning-rod, contrived by Benjamin Franklin as a result 
of his kite-flying experiment, 1752. George III. hated 
Franklin, but his faith in the discovery was such that he 
had lightning-rods put on Buckingham Palace and on the 
Royal Powder Magazines. 

57 : 7. The going forth of the Spirit. Compare Matt. 
xxv, 13; lAike xii, 40; Ps. civ, 30; cxxxix, 7. 

57 : 8. Lightning when it shines, etc. Reference to 
Matt, xxiv, 27. 

57 : 12. Judaism. "The religious doctrines and rites 
of the Jews as enjoined in the laws of Moses." — J. S. 
Mill. 

57 : 13. Temples. Ruskin is holding to the original 
meaning of the word : a piece of land marked off; land 



NOTES 301 

dedicated to a god. It is a fact, however, that the Jews 
in early times built a temple at Jerusalem for the worship 
of Jehovah. See the use of the word temple, 1 Cor. iii, 16. 

57 : 14. Now, you know perfectly well they are not temples. 
1866 : " Now, you know, or ought to know, they are not 
temples." Which declaration is more polite? 

57 : 15. Synagogues. Primarily synagogue does not 
mean gathering place, but to lead with; to bring to- 
gether; furthermore, whether applied to assembly, or build- 
ing, the word is, and was in Ruskin's day, inseparably con- 
nected with the name of the Jews. 

57 : 20. Churches. Why should we translate it 
"churches"? The Vulgate has synagogis. Ruskin is in- 
sisting on the KURIAKON, of the Greek. 

57 : 24. Thou, when thou prayest, etc. Paraphrase of 
Matt, vi, 5, 6. 

57 : 28. And your hills. Originally followed by : "I am 
trying to show you." 

58 : 4. Lares . . . Lar. Mythological household gods; 
deceased ancestors supposed to protect the family. Com- 
pare Milton, Od. Nat., hne 191. 

58 : 12. The Seven Lamps. The Seven Lamps of Archi- 
tecture, 1848 or 1849. "These seven 'lamps' arc Sacrifice, 
Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, Obedience. The book 
. . . deals with the spirit in which the architect should 
work, and the national spirit which makes great national 
architecture possible." — Herbert Bates. 

58:16. The Stones of Venice. Vol. I, 1851; Vols. 11, 
III, 1853. Read first The Seven Lamps. 

58 : 20. Renaissance architecture. The style of architec- 
ture accompanying the revival of classical learning and art 
in Italy in the fifteenth century. 

58 : 27. Honest Infidels. What is an honest infidel? 



302 NOTES 

58:30. Exchange business. "Business" appears twice 
in this sentence. Does the same spirit prompt both uses? 

58 : 32. Farther. See note on § 61. 

59 : 6. Ecclesiastical. Pertaining to the clergy. An ec- 
clesiastic is one called out to the service of the church, 

59 : 15. Laity. Compare laymen. 

59 : 16. Good architecture. No footnote in the origi- 
nal. 

59 : 21. Baron's castle. The home of the possessor of a 
fief who had feudal tenants under him. — Burgher's street. 
The homes along the streets of a borough. 

59:23. Warrior kings. 1866: "soldier kings." 

59 : 26. Cloister. An enclosed place; a place of retire- 
ment for religious duties. See monastery, nunnery, con- 
vent, abbey, and priory. 

59 : 27. Crusade. A military expedition undertaken 
for the purpose of recovering the Holy Land from the 
Mohammedans. What is the origin of the word crusade ? 

60 : 2. The gist. The main point. 

60 : 9. Hieroglyphic. Emblematic, or of mysterious 
significance. 

60 : 18. Egypt. That large area of country, in north- 
eastern Africa, watered by the Nile. — Syria. A division 
of Asiatic Turkey, extending about 380 miles along the 
Mediterranean coast. — India. A part of the British Em- 
pire is the region south of the Himalaya Mountains, in- 
cluding Baluchistan on the west and part of Indo-China 
on the east. 

60 : 20. Bosphorus. The Bosphorus connects the Black 
Sea and the Sea of Marmora, and forms part of the boundary 
between Europe and Asia. 

60 : 22. Mediaeval. The Middle Ages. 

60 : 24. Rennaisance. See note on § 65. 



NOTES 303 

60 : 32. Stumbling block . . . Foolishness. Reference 
to 1 Cor. 1, 23. 

61 : 3. Athena. Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, war, 
and all the liberal arts. 

61 : 8. ^gis. A shield or protective armor; literally, 
a goatskin. The shield of Jupiter which he gave to Minerva. 

61 : 10. Gorgon. Gorgon, or Medusa, one of the three 
fabled sisters, Stheno, Euryale, and Medusa, with snaky 
hair and frightful aspect, the sight of whom turned the 
beholder to stone. 

61 : 19. Crowned with the olive spray. See the notes on 
§ 16, Introduction. 

61 : Note. Dorian Apollo-worship. The worship of 
Apollo, the god of the fine arts. — Athenian Virgin-worship. 
The worship of Minerva, in whose honor the Parthenon was 
erected. Read Lord Byron's scathing satire, The Curse of 
Minerva, which bears on the removal of sculpture from 
the Parthenon to the British Museum some eighty years 
ago. — Dionysus. A name for Bacchus, the god of wine. — 
Ceres. Daughter of Saturn; the goddess of agriculture 
and fruit^ulture. Ceres was the mother of Proserpine. — 
Hercules. The son of Jupiter and Alcmena. Consult an 
encyclopaedia for the " Twelve Labors of Hercules." — Venus- 
worship. The worship of beauty. If a victim was offered 
on her altar, it was a white goat; usually incense alone was 
offered. — Muses. The nine daughters of Jupiter and 
Mnemosyne : Calliope, Clio, Erato, Thalia, Melpomene, 
Terpsichore, Euterpe, Polyhymnia, and Urania. — Aratra 
Pentelici. To the original note Ruskin adds : "Compare 
Aratra Pentelici, § 200." The six lectures included under 
this title were delivered at the University of Oxford in 
1870-1872, six to eight years later than the date of 
"Traffic." 



304 NOTES 

62 : 8. Remission of sins. See Matt, xxvi, 28; Mark i, 
4; Luke i, 77; iii, 3; xxiv, 47; Acts ii, 38; x, 43. See also 
Heb. ix, 22; x, 18. 

62 : IT). Melancholy. See note on § 59. 

62 : 16. Aspiration. The act of ardently hoping or 
desiring. 

62 : 28. Selling of absolution. This refers to the ''Ego 
te absolvo a peccaiis tuis in nomine Patris et Filii et Spiritus 
Sancti. Amen," of tlie priest, wlio received pay for the 
forgiving of sins. 

63 : 3. Compounding. Mixing simples, or ingredients, 
for a remcdJ^ 

63 : 6. Low Church or high. The High Church holds 
to apostolic succession, the divine right of episcopacy; the 
Low Church does not regard episcopacy as essential to the 
life of the church. In doctrine the Low Church is generally 
Calvinistic. There is also a Broad Church, the church to 
which Charles Kingsley belonged. The members of this 
church are sometimes called "Liberals." 

63 : 7. Tetzel's trading. Johann Tetzel, the Dominican 
monk whose frivolous traffic in indulgences caused Martin 
Luther to take the first, and many subsequent, steps tow- 
ards the Reformation. 

63 : 10. Bals masques. Mask-balls. 

63 : 11. Guillotines. A machine formerly used in France 
for beheading people. The name comes from Dr. Guillotin, 
a French physician, who, in the Constitutional Assembly, 
1789, proposed to abolish decapitation with the axe or sword. 
The machine was originally called " Louison," or " Louisette," 
for the inventor, Dr. Antoine Louis. Read Dickens, A 
Tale of Two Cities, Book III, Chapter V. 

63 : 13. Parthienon. Marble temple. of the Greek god- 
dess Athene, or Pallas, on the Acropolis at Athens. 



NOTES 



305 



63:16. Lady of Salvation. The Virgin Mary. -Revival- 
ist People of the Renaissance period. 

63 : 17. Versailles. A city in France some ten miles 
from Paris Riiskin has reference to the palace, the chief 
attraction of the place, which has a long and interesting 
history -Vatican. The Pope's palace and other buildings, 
-museum, library, chapel, etc., -on the western banks 
of the Tiber, in Rome. 

63 • 23 Tithes of property. The Old English tithe, tenth. 
Tenths of income. - Sevenths of time. Sunday, or Sabbath. 

63 • 31 Athena Agoraia. Ayopa, the forum, market- 
place, public square. Agora^an, an epithet of Jupiter and 
Mercury, as having statues or altars in the market-place, 
gee I 77' — Athena. 1866 : " Minerva." 

64 : 2. Built to her. Built in her honor. See also the 
end of this paragraph. 

64 : 5. To make it an Acropolis. 1866 : "taking it for 
an Acropolis." Acropolis, the citadel of Athens. 

64:6. Vaster than the walls of Babylon. 1866: "pro- 
longed masses of Acropolis." 

64 : 7. The temple of Ephesus. 1866 : " Parthenon." 
64 : 9. Harbor piers. 1866 : " harbor-piers." 
64 • 25 Apollo. Son of Jupiter and Latona. His favor- 
ite residence was Mount Parnassus, where he presided over 

the Muses. ^ t -^ a 

64 : 26. Bacchus. The god of wine, son of Jupiter and 

Semcle. See Dionysus, § 70, note. 

64:32. Direction. 1866 : "manners." 

65 • 3 Strong evidence of his dislike, etc. Matt, xxi, 12; 
Markxi, 15; John ii, 14, 16. Is not Ruskin overzealous 
here? Surely the "Master of Christians" was not eviden- 
cing his dislike for proper mercantile transactions, conducted 
in the right place ; but for buying and selling in the temple 



306 NOTES 

of God, and especially for selling doves, intended for sacri- 
fice, at an exorbitant price, — such a price that the dove- 
pedlers were "thieves." 

65 : 9. Quartering. See note, Introduction, § 6. 

65 : 13. Magnanimity. Here means dignity, elevation. 
From magnus = great; animus = mind. 

65 : 14. Feeding the hungry, etc. Compare Matt, xxv, 
36, 38, 43, 44. 

65:17. Anyhow! 1866 : "anyhow?" 

65 : 19. Compulsory comfort. Originally followed by a 
semicolon, and with no footnote. 

65 : 20. Occupying. Originally unitalicized. 
" Carry " them! Originally followed by a period. 
Witty. Wise; requiring knowledge. 
The elements. Clouds, winds, etc. 

Paid Uttle . . . regularly. See § 32. 
Knight-errant. Ruskin refers to the knight who 
travels for the purpose of exhibiting generosity. 

66 : 8. Pedler. Pedlar, or peddler. 
66 : 9. Ribands. Ribbons. 

66 : 10. Crusades. See note on § 66. 

66 : 16. Loaves and fishes. See Matt, xiv, 17, 19; xv, 36; 

Mark vi, 38, 41, 43; Luke ix, 13, 16. The footnote was 
not in the original ; note it carefully. 

66 : 21. Best gunpowder. Note the grim humor. 

66 : 24. Frieze. A sculptured or ornamented band of a 
building. 

"Nor did there want 
Cornice or frieze with bossy sculptures graven." 

— Paradise Lost, I, 715-716. 

66 : 25. For the sticking of bills. Bill-boards, for adver- 
tising purposes. 



65 


:24, 


65 


:28 


65 


:30 


66 


: 3. 


66 


:7. 



NOTES 307 

67 : Note. Jerem. xvii, 11, etc. The Vulgate : Perdix 
fovit quce peperit: fecit divitias, et non in judicio: in dimidio 
dierum suorum derelinquet eas, et in novissimo suo erit in- 
sipiens. 

67:3. St. George's Cross. 1866 : ''her Cross." The 
banner of the patron saint of England. The " Union Jack" 
of the British Navy is a combination of the banners of St. 
George and St. Andrew. For the story of the legendary 
St. George, see Percy's Reliques, Vol. II, pp. 160, 187-189. 
See Ruskin's Queen of the Air, § 4. 

67 : 4. Milanese boar . . . Gennesaret proper. Compare 
Gennesaret pigs, R. to N ., Vol. I, p. 84. Ruskin's allusion 
is to the herd of swine into which the devils were cast, 
Matt, viii, 32; Mark v, 13; Luke viii, 33. See also the 
Merchant of Venice, I, iii, 30-35. — Field. The whole sur- 
face of a shield, or as much of it as is not covered by the 
figures upon it. 

67 : 5. In the best market. The original has no footnote. 

67 : 7. Thirty slits. Since the number of days in the 
months varies from twenty-eight to thirty-one, this may 
be a sly hint that the members of the Exchange are not 
averse to the "Judas bargain." 

67 : 17. Greek Goddess of Wisdom. Minerva; Pallas 
Athene. Section 78. 

67 : 21. Agora Goddess. See note on § 72. 

68:7. Gather gold. See Hawthorne's "Old Gather- 
gold," in The Great Stone Face. 

68 : 8. House-roofs [of gold]. Are not the domes of some 
important buildings now finished in pure gold? For ex- 
ample, the Congressional Library, Washington; and the 
Cathedral, Baltimore. 

68 : 15. Olympus. A mountain 9000 feet high, on the 
coast of Thessaly, where the gods were supposed to reside. 



308 NOTES 

— Pelion. A wooded mountain wlioro the wars between 
tho giants and the gods took place. 

68 : 16. Ossa. A mountain of Thessaly which the giants 
piled on top of Pelion to enable them to attack the gods. 
Olympus u[)on Pelion would be so much taller than Ossa 
upon Peiii>n, as to make Ossa appear insignificant. — "like 
a wart." {Hamhi, \, i, oO(i.) The phraseology of this 
question is suggestive of Riblical influence. Compare Job 
xxxviii, 31 : ''Canst thou bind the sweet influences of the 
Pleiades, or loose the bands of Orion?" 

68 : 20. Whinstone. A prtnincial name, in England, for 
basaltic rock. Consult the dictionary for whin-dikes and 
irh in -sills. 

68 : 21. Not . . . neither. See note on § 00. 

68 : 27. Plutus. The blind, lame god of riches, son of 
Jason and Ceres. AVhy blind and lame? Is Ruskin taking 
the name of Plutus in vain? 

69 : 2. Pallas, ^^'hen Minerva destroyed the giant, 
Pallas, she was given his name. Pallas Athene is the Gre- 
cian goddess of wisdom. See § 77. — The Madonna. The 
mother of Christ. 

69 : S. Vital . . . deathful. What is tlie origin of the 
word " vital "? 

69:11. Last here. (.Original note: "'Two Paths/ 
p. OS." 

69 : It. Undulating world. Highlands and lowlands. 

69 : 20. Votaries. Those consecrated to the worship of 
the goddess. 

69 : 22. Boudoir. An elegantly furnished private room. 
Literally, a place where one may be alone to pout. 

69 : 28. The mill. etc. Kuskin. like Wordsworth, hated 
steam-engines and coal smoke. In letters to Professor 
Norton. Kuskin speaks of " that infernal invention of steam" 



KOTES 309 

(Vol. I, p. 77); "Dickens . . . a pure modernist — a leader 
of the steam-whistle part}'" (Vol. II, p. 5). 

70 : 5. Seen from above. Seen by the employer, Ruskin 
means; but such conditions as he suggests would be "very 
pretty indeed," seen from Higher Above. 

70 : 6. Seen from below. Seen bj'^ the laborer, Ruskin 
means; but why "not as all so pretty" to from eight hun- 
dred to a thousand workers, who never suffer the tempta- 
tions or the evils of drink; who are well paid, for they " never 
strike"; who have respectable clothes, and are in good 
health, for they "always go to church on Sunday"; whose 
children are properly trained, and probably educated, for 
they, parents and children, "always express themselves in 
respectful language" to each other and to their employers, 
"Not at all so pretty, seen from below." If from very far 
below, — granted. 

70 : 11. Lottery . . . blanks. Lottery, casting or draw- 
ing lots; a gambling scheme in which some tickets have 
numbers drawing prizes; others arc blank. 

70 : 14. "They should take who have the power, and they 
should keep who can." 

— Wordsworth. Rob Roy's Grave, lines 39, 40. 

70 : 25. Government . . . liberty. What is liberty? Does 
not the best government afford the largest liberty? Com- 
pare Russia and the LTnited States of America. 

71 : 5, Delicates. Delicacies. Compare the German, 
Ddikatessen. 

71 : 6. Solomon, etc. See 1 Kings vi. 

71 : 25. Even good things have no abiding power — and 
shall these evil things persist in victorious evil? 1S66 : 
" Do you think these phenomena are to stay alwaj's in their 
present power or aspect?" 

71 : 29. Parthenon. See notes on §§ 70, 72. 



310 NOTES 

71 : 30. Priory. See note on Cloister, § 66. 

71 : 33. Men may come, and men may go, etc. An 
adaptation from the refrain of Tennyson's The Brook. 

72:7. Such benevolence. 1866: "it." — I know that 
even all this wrong. 1866 : " I know that many of you have 
done, and are every day doing, whatsoever you feel to -be 
in your power; and that even all this wrong, etc." Why 
this change? 

72 : 12. To do his best . . . modern economist. 1866 : 
"to do his best, not noticing that this best is essentially 
and centrally the best for himself, not for others. And all 
this has come of the spreading of that thrice accursed, thrice 
impious doctrine of the modern economist." Consider this 
carefully, for the change from " thrice accursed, thrice im- 
pious doctrine," to "plausible iniquity," is no small step. 
See Introduction, note, § 8. See also R. to N., Vol, I, pp, 
230-233. 

72 : 13. Do the best for yourself, etc. What is the " Gol- 
den Rule"? What was David Harum's golden rule, in a 
horse trade? 

72 : 14. Our great Master said not so. Reference to Matt. 
xxiii, 11; Mark x, 44. 

72 : 17. Pagans. Worshippers of false gods. 

72 : 20. Plato. A celebrated philosopher and teacher 
of Athens, who died on his eighty-first birthday, about 
348 B.C. He was a pupil of Socrates. See note on § 47, 

72 : 28. They are at the close, etc. 1866 :" It is at the 
close, etc." Why the change? — Athens. Athense, the 
capital of Attica, reached its greatest splendor in the time 
of Pericles, 460-429 B.C. 

72 : 30. Genesis. Formation, or origination. 

72 : 31. Atlantis. See Ignatius Donnelly's Atlantis, the 
Ante-Deluvian World. 



NOTES 311 

73:1. Sons of God . . . daughters of men. See Gen. vi, 2. 

73 : 11. All meekness of wisdom, etc. Originally un- 
italicized. 

73 : 16. Only their common love, etc. Originally un- 
italicized. 

73 : 23. Prevalent mortality. The prevailing character- 
istics of the "daughters of men." 

73 : 27. Blind hearts. Compare Milton's " Blind 
mouths," Lycidas, 119, and Ruskin's comment, Sesame and 
Lilies, § 22. 

74 : 5. Last words, etc. 1866 : ''So ended are the last 
words." Note the improvement : the present form refers 
to the whole quotation from Plato; the original referred 
to the dash at the end. — The rest is silence. Hamlet, V, ii, 
368. 

74 : 7. Cubits. A cubit is a measure of length, — the 
distance from the elbow to the end of the middle finger : 
Roman, 17.47 inches; Greek, 18.20; English, 18. 

74 : 9. Plain of Dura. Dura Den, between Cupar and 
St. Andrews, in Fifeshire, Scotland. 

74 : 10. Forbidden ... by our Master. The reference 
is .to the second commandment, Ex. xx, 4. See also Mark x, 
23, 24; Li/A-exviii, 24. 

74 : 17. Hades. The nether world; the abode of evil 
spirits, ruled over by Pluto (Latin), Hades (Greek). A 
synonym for hell (English), Hiille (German), sheol (He- 
brew). 
I 74 : 19. Life good for all men. 1866 : "life for all men." 

74 : 23. Ways of . . . pleasantness . . . paths of peace. 
Prov. iii, 17. The note is not in the original. 

74 : 24. Wealth into commonwealth. Is he still punning? 

74 : 30. Temples not made with hands . . . eternal. 
2 Cor. V, 1. 



312 NOTES 

LECTURE III 
War 

In Ruskin's Notes on the Political Economy of Prussia, he 
says: "I am often accused of inconsistency; but believe 
myself defensible against the charge with respect to what I 
have said on nearly every subject except that of war. It 
is impossible for me to write consistently of war, for the 
group of facts I have gathered about it lead me to two 
precisely opposite conclusions. 

" When I find this the case, in other matters, I am silent, 
till I can choose my conclusion : but, with respect to war, I 
am forced to speak, by the necessities of time; and forced 
to act, one way or another. The conviction on which I act 
is, that it causes an incalculable amount of avoidable human 
suffering, and that it ought to cease among Christian na- 
tions ; and if therefore any of my boy-friends desire to be 
soldiers, I try my utmost to bring them into what I conceive 
to be a better mind. But, on the other hand, I know cer- 
tainly that the most beautiful characters yet developed 
among men have been formed in war; — that all great na- 
tions have been warrior nati.ons, and that the only kinds 
of peace which we are likely to get in the present age are 
ruinous alike to the intellect and the heart. 

"The third lecture ... [in Crown of Wild Olive] ad- 
dressed to young soldiers, had for its object to strengthen 
their trust in the virtue of their profession. It is inconsist- 
ent with itself, in its closing appeal to women, praying them 
to use their influence to bring wars to an end. . . . 

" How far, in the future, it may be possible for men to gain 
the kingship without either fronting death, or inflicting it, 
seems to me not at present determinable. The historical 



NOTES 313 

facts are that, broadly speaking, none but soldiers, or per- 
sons with a soldierly faculty, have ever yet shown themselves 
fit to be kings; and that no other men are so gentle, so just, 
and so clear-sighted. Wordsworth's character of the happy 
wrrrior [see Wordsworth's poem entitled Character of the 
Happy Warriorl cannot be reached in the height of it 
hut by a warrior; nay so much is it beyond common strength 
that I had supposed the entire meaning of it to be meta- 
phorical, until one of the best soliders in England himself read 
me the poem [Footnote : The late Sir Herbert Edwardes.], 
and taught me, what I might have known, had I enough 
watched his own life, that it was entirely literal. ..." 

That Ruskin thought deeply and seriously on the subject 
of war is clear to those familiar with his works. In Sesame 
and Lilies (Lecture I, § 47) he says : " Have patience with 
me, while I read you a single sentence out of the only book 
[ Unto this Last] properly to be called a book, that I have yet 
written myself, the one that will stand (if anything stand) 
siu'est and longest of all work of mine." (Here follows 
two long sentences — footnote to § 76 — on the subject 
of unjust wars supported by the wealth of capitalists.) 

In connection with this lecture on war, one should read 
also §§ 11, 17, 21, and 57 of Unto this Last. It would be 
well to reread, from the text in hand, §§ 9, 28, 32, 38, 45, 48, 
and 75; and to read, in advance, §§ 105, 114, 115, 116, 117, 
118, and 119. 

Mote the felicitous opening of this lecture as compared 
with the first paragraph on "Traffic." 

75 : 17. Knightly example. The example of protecting 
the distressed, maintaining the right, and living a stainless 
life. 

75 : 18. Few words. Men of great deeds are usually men 
of few words. We have this idea in some plain sayings : 



314 - NOTES 

"Barking dogs never bite"; "The emptier the wagon the 
louder it sounds." 

76 : 28. Tintoret. Jacopo Robusti (II Tintoretto or 
Tintoret) (1518-1594) was one of the greatest painters of 
the Venetian school, or of the world. His father was a dyer 
(Italian, Tintore) ; hence the son's nickname, which means 
little dyer. 

77 : 19. Samuel. As a religious judge, see 1 Sam. vii; 
viii, 1. 

78 : 1. Lyre. A musical instrument from which we get 
the word lyric. 

78 : 17. Modern. No footnote in the original. 
78 : 23. A gift for fighting. Keats was a pugnacious 
schoolboy; but all boys who love a fight are not poets. 
78 : 28. Paradoxical. Seemingly contradictory. 

78 : 30. Born of Mars, etc. Romulus, twin brother of 
Remus. 

79 : 4. Pacis imponere morem. To enforce the habit or 
custom of peace. 

79 : 12. Lombardy. The name is supposed to be from 
the Longohardi or Langobardi, a people of northern Ger- 
many, west of the Elbe, and afterwards in northern Italy. 
Lombardy was at one time the name of Italy. 

79 : 14. Alps. Some sixteen groups of mountains, among 
which are the Swiss Alps, the Lombard Alps, the Tyrol and 
Venetian Alps. — Apennines. A range of mountains forming 
the backbone of the peninsula of Italy. A southern branch 
of the Alpine system. 

79 : 19. Their king. No footnote in the original. 

79 : 29. Philanthropist, From philos + anthropos: phil + 
anthropia: loving + man. 

80 : 20. Muse of History. Clio, daughter of Jupiter and 
Mnemosyne. 



NOTES 315 

80 : 28. Expired in peace. In time of peace. 

80 : 31. Dragon's teeth . . . men. These men sprang, 
armed, from the dragon's teeth sown by Cadmus. They 
were caUed Sparti (The Sown-Men). — Genseric or Genserich 
{dr. 406-477), king of the Vandals. Though a small, lame, 
mean man, he was a renowned warrior. — Suwarrow. 
Count Alexander Suwaroff (or Suwarrow), born in Finland, 
Nov. 25, 1729; died in St. Petersburg, May 18, 1800. A 
celebrated Russian field-marshal, of Swedish descent. He 
was specially noted for his cruelty. 

81 : 1. Borders of Scotland. Between Scotland and 
England; the section of country that furnishes Scott, and 
other balladists and novelists, with many thrilling scenes 
and events. 

81 : 3. Swiss with Austria. See articles on Austria and 
Switzerland, in history or cyclopaedia. 

81 : 5. France under Napoleon. Napoleon Bonaparte 
(1769-1821). First consul of the Republic, 1799-1804; 
Emperor, 1804-1814. 

81 : 6. War in America. The Civil War, 1861-1865. 

81 : 17. Out of such war. Originally : "forth from 
such war." 

81 : 27. Conscript . . . pressed sailor. A sailor enrolled, 
by compulsion, for naval service. 

82 : 8. Calamity. The footnote is not in the original. 
82 : 20. Laborious orders. Laborers. 

82 : 21. Puppets, etc. Things to shoot at. 
82 : 22. The footnote is not in the original. 

82 : 25. Multitude of human pawns. Originally : " mul- 
titude of small human pawns." 

83 : 3. Checker of forest and field. Originally : "green 
fielded board." 

83 : 5. Olympic dust. Dust in the arena of the Olympic 



316 NOTES 

games. See notes, Olympic games, § 38; Isthmian games, 
§ 29. 

83 : 6. Be with you in. Can this construction be im- 
proved? 

83 : 8. Amphitheatre . . . arena . . . peasant . . . glad- 
iatorial war. The text seems to be sufficiently explanatory. 
If it is not, any school dictionary will give the meanings of 
these words. 

83 : 14. Jousting. Engaging in mock combat on'horse- 
back, as knights in the lists. The word is also spelled just, 
and seems to be akin to jostle. See note on § 100. 

84 : 1. Speaking with them. Originally : "speaking for 
them." 

84 : 22. Battersea. A suburb of London, in Surrey, on 
the Thames. 

84 : 25. Arbitrament. Here the word means decision. 

84 : 30. Laws of honor. This means here : Certain rules 
regulating duelling, and making it a social crime to decline 
a challenge to a duel. 

85 : 9. Greatest of English thinkers. Thomas Carlyle. 

85 : 21. Thirty stone avoirdupois. The stone is legally 
fourteen pounds. 30 x 14 = 420 pounds, a pretty heavy 
weight for the weakest to stand under. The stone, however, 
varies, from five to thirty-two pounds, according to the 
article weighed. 

86 : 3. Busy as the devil is. The reference seems to be 
to 1 Peter, v, 8 : "The devil, as a roaring lion, walketh 
about, seeking whom he may devour." 

86 : 9. Sartor Resartus. The title of one of Carlyle's 
books. The title means : The tailor retailored. 

86 : 18. Fine race of them. Is this irony? 

86 : 20. Tournament . . . steeple chase. Tournament, 
a mock fight in which a number of combatants were en- 



NOTES 317 

gaged. The joust was a trial of the skill of two, one against 
the other. See note on § 97. Steeple chase, a cross-country 
ride, over ditches, walls, or natural barriers, towards some 
visible object — as a church steeple. 

86 : 22. Hurdle-races . . . cricketing. Hurdle-race, a 
race in which artificial barriers, hurdles,, fences, etc., must 
be leaped. Cricketing. See note on § 60. 

86 : 27. Westminster Abbey. The coronation church of 
the sovereigns of England, containing monuments to kings, 
poets, warriors, statesmen, scientists, and others. 

87 : 10. Rather slay him . . . than cheat him. Is not 
Ruskin extreme? A cheated man may be a " brisk, useful 
craftsman," whereas a slain man would be but a "dead 
carcase." 

87:31. Power both in the making, etc. Originally: "a 
tendency both to the making, etc." 

88 : 3. Got. Suggest a better word, or a better construc- 
tion. 

88 : 12. Rightly. The footnote is not in the original. 

88 : 20. Mr. Helps. Sir Arthur Helps (1813-1857). Rus- 
kin calls attention to his " beautiful quiet English," and the 
sincerity of his thinking, in Modern Painters, 1856, III, 268. 

88 : 29. Destructive machines. Implements of warfare, 
as machine guns. 

89:3. Leave the living creatures. Originally: "leave 
the fragments of living creatures." 

89 : 10. Poisoned arrows. The Indians are said to have 
poisoned the points of their arrows, so that an otherwise 
slight wound meant death. 

89 : 21. Miiller's "Dorians." Karl Otfried Miiller (1797- 
1840). A noted archseologist; author of Die Dorier (The 
Dorians), and many other works. There is no footnote in 
the original. 



318 NOTES 

89 : 23. Sparta. The original name of this country, 
Laconia, was changed to Lacedsemon, for the king, and then 
by him to Sparta, for his wife. 

89 : 25. \vo-(ra. Madness, frenzy. In the Iliad, ix, 305, 
\{i(r(Ta means rage, fury. — Aristodemus. Son of Aristom- 
achus ; brother of Temenus and Chrespontes ; husband 
of Argia; father of the twins, Procles and Eurysthenes. He 
and his brothers conquered Peloponnesus, and divided it 
among themselves, 1104 b.c. — Isadas. A Spartan, who, 
upon seeing the Thebans entering the cit}^, stripped himself 
naked and, with a sword and a spear, engaged the enemy. 
For his valor he was rewarded with a crown. 

89 : 28. Barbarians. In the time of Homer, those who 
could not speak the Greek language. Plato divided the 
hinnan race into Hellenes and Barbaroi. 

89 : 32. Crete. A large island in the Mediterranean, in 
ancient times called Idcea, and later, Crete, or Creta. 

90 : 14. Interdicted. Inter, between, + dicere, to say. 
Here the word means prohibited. 

90 : 22. Musical language. Ruskin is, in this sentence, 
bitterly sarcastic. The musical language he refers to is 
martial, such as "Dixie" and ''Yankee Doodle." 

90 : 25. Battle of Corinth. A battle fought at the ancient 
city of Corinth, which is located on the isthmus connecting 
Hellas with the Peloponnesus. 

90 : 26. Gettysburg. Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, where 
one of the great battles of the Civil War was fought. 

91 : 24. Mother . . . gives her two-year-old child, etc. 
Probably an actual occurrence, the account of which was 
preserved by Ruskin in the form of a newspaper clipping. 

91 : 29. Creed. A summary of what one believes. 

92 : 14. Made you upright, etc. See Eccl. vii, 29. There 
should be no quotation marks here. 



NOTES 319 

92 : 19. My righteousness, etc. An exact quotation of J oh 
xxvii, 6. 

93 : 27. Sections 109 and 110 were, originally, one section. 
Why did Ruskin make the change? 

93 : 30. Plebeian. Latin plebs, plebis , the common people. 

94 : 5. Captain by divine right. The king. 
94 : 6. Hues. Colors. 

94 : 32. This was, originally, included in the preceding 
section. Why the change? 

95:26. Farther. Why should this be " further " ? (This 
mistake is made so frequently, by Ruskin, that no further 
reference to it is necessary.) 

96 : 15. The strength is in the men. One of Sidney 
Lanier's dialect poems has for title : "Thar's More in the 
Man than thar is in the Land." 

96 : 17. A little group of wise hearts is better than a wil- 
derness full of fools. This could pass for one of Solomon's 
proverbs. What does Shylock say about a wilderness of 
monkeys ? 

96 : 24. We have not yet strengthened, etc. If not, why 
not ? Did not Burke prophesy this in his speech on the 
Conciliation? 

96 : 31. Austria. The Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, the 
body of whose territory lies in the interior of Europe, with 
some 500 miles of sea-coast on the Adriatic. 

97 : 1. India. Those parts of India under the adminis- 
tration of a British Viceroy. 

97 : 5. This section and the preceding section were, 
originally, one. Is there a reason for the change? 

97 : 26. Sections 117, 118, 119, and 120 were, originally, 
one. Why the change? 

98 : 21. Peacocky motives. The peacock is proud of his 
brilliant plumage. Is he proud of his feet? 



320 NOTES 

99 : 12. Stay scabbarded. Keep swords, or daggers, in 
the scabbard. 

99 : 15. Britomart. In Spenser's Faerie Queene, Books 
III and IV, Britomart represents armed Chastity over- 
coming all who battle with her. Ruskin mentions her in 
Sesame and Lilies, § 62. 

99 : 17. Sheathed in darkness. Scabbarded in the grave; 
dead. 

100 : 25. Exeter Hall. A large building, in London, on 
the north side of the Strand, used for religious, dramatic, 
and musical purposes. 

100 : 30. Beadles of her little Bethels. Hebrew Beth-el, 
house of God. Beadle here means an inferior parish officer 
who preserves order in church service, and chastises petty 
offenders. 

100 : 31. Originally, sections 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, were 
one. Why the breaking up? 

101 : 29. Only. Is this word in the right place? 

102 : 3. Aristocracy of England. Superiors in rank or 
fortune. 

102 : 9. A bit of paper in my hand. Ruskin clipped 
freely from current newspapers, and often carried clip- 
pings with him and read them to his audience, — possibly 
for the effect the presentation of the original would 
have. 

102 : Note. Left the number, etc. How would this "en- 
able the audience to verify the quoted sentence"? — Baron 
Liebig. Justus, Baron von Liebig (1803-1873). A cele- 
brated chemist; professor of chemistry at Giessen, and 
later, at Munich. — Alembics, An apparatus formerly used 
in distillation. 

103:4. "Ashes to ashes." "Ashes to ashes, dust to 
dust." This sentence is used in the burial service. 



NOTES 321 

103 : 6. Gentlemen of England. In the original (1866) 
Ruskin said, "I tell you, gentlemen of England." Which 
is better? 

103 : 13. Field . . . faces. What is the connection be- 
tween green fields and ruddy faces? 

103 : 16. Nor the sky black over their heads. Originally, 
this v/as followed by : ''and that, when the day comes for 
their country to lay her honours in the dust, her crest will 
not rise from it more loftily because of its dust of coal. 
Gentlemen, I tell you, solemnly, that the day is coming 
when the soldiers of England must be her tutors and the 
captains of her army, captains also of her mind." Ruskin's 
omitting this does not indicate a change in his opinion, 
but rather, an unwillingness to prophesy what he was 
opposed to. 

103 : 17. And bear with me, etc. Originally : "And now, 
remember, etc." 

103:21. If I urge you, etc. Originally: "Remember 
that your fitness for all future trust depends upon what 
you are now." 

104 : 7. When his every act, etc. Originally : " When his 
every act is a foundation of future conduct." Which is 
better? 

104 : 12. There. Unitalicized in the original. 

104 : 13. This and the succeeding sections were, origi- 
nally, one. 

106 : 2. Integer vitae, scelerisque purus. The man pure 
in life and free from guilt. Horace, Ode, xxii, 1. 

106 : 4. A knightly life. See note below on " Vow of 
stainless truth." 

106 : 9. Equites . . . chivalry. See the Latin and the 
French for horse, and note the difference between the Eng- 
lish words equestrian and chivalrous. 

Y 



322 NOTES 

106 : 16. You must bind them, etc. The allusion is to 
Prov. iii, 3. 
106 : 18. Vow of stainless truth. 

"The King 
Will bind thee by such vows as is a shame 
A man should not be bound by, yet the which 
No man can keep." 

— Tennyson, Gareth and Lynette, lines 265-268, 

106 : 31. This number (129) covers practically two sec- 
tions of the same paragraph, since the first is merely intro- 
ductory to the second. 

108 : 3. Watch . . . and pray . . . temptation. Prob- 
ably suggested by Matt, xxvi, 41 : " Watch and pray, that 
ye enter not into temptation." 

108 : 23. Whatever of best. Originally : " Whatever of 
the best." The change was doubtless made in conformity 
to "whatever of highest," which follows, and which is the 
same in both original and revision. 

Beat swords into ploughshares. Is. ii, 4 ; Micah 



109 


: 1. 


iv, 3. 




109 


: 16 


109 


:26 


110 


: 2. 



Put a period to war. End it. 
Obedience. Compare 1 Smn. xv, 22. 
Bibles being attacked. See note on Bishop 
Colenso, § 34. 

110 : 7. Dress plainly. See 2 Tim. ii, 9. 
110 : 9. Have pity on the poor. See Matt, xix, 21 ; Prov. 
xiv, 21; xvii, 5, and elsewhere. 

110 : 19. Prince of Peace. The name given to Christ. 
See Is. ix, 6. 

110 : 20. In righteousness, etc. Exact quotation of Rev. 
xix, 11, except that the comma is inserted. 



NOTES 323 

THE QUEEN OF THE AIR 

I. ATHENA CHALINITIS 

{Athena in the Heavens) 

" Denmark Hill, April 12, 1869. 
" Dearest Charles, — 

" I must stay six days longer [' He was about setting out for 
Italy, with intent to make a long stay at Verona.' — Pro- 
fessor Norton.] — till Monday fortnight, this work has grown 
under my hands so. It is to be called 'Queen of the Air,' 
and [is to be] divided into three sections : — 

1 

Athena in the Heavens 

2 
Athena in the Earth 

3 
Athena in the Heart 

" That is to say, of course, the spirit in the winds, the spirit 
in the potter's clay, and in the Invention of Arts; and I'm 
going to get what I mainly mean about 'didactic Art' said 
unmistakably in the last section, against the rascally 'im- 
moral Gift' set of people on the one side. . . . Ever Yours, 
J. R." {R. to N., Vol. I, pp. 199, 200.) 

A few days later (April 28, 1869), Ruskin wrote to Pro- 
fessor Norton (Vol. I, p. 204), "... Write me a title- 
page ... to go with all the series, and with 'Queen of 
the Air* subordinate." The fact that "The Queen of the 
Air" is the title, rather than the sub-title, of the series, is 
probably due to a suggestion by Professor Norton. 



324 NOTES 

For the meaning and derivation of Athene, see Gayley's 
Classic Myths, Boston, 1900, p. 416, § 35. Read, at once, 
also, §§ 10 and 14 of this Lecture (" Athena in the Heavens ") 
and the footnote, p. 153. 

Ruskin did not revise the Queen of the Air. 

PREFACE 

113 : 15. Charles Newton. Charles Thomas Newton 
(1816-18G6), classical archaeologist, author, and diplomat. 
He married the daughter of Joseph Severn, Keats's friend, 
who inspired the latter with such themes as the Ode to a 
Grecian Urn. 

114 : 6. Professor Tyndall. John Tyndall (1820-1893), 
a noted English scientist; professor of natural philosophy 
in the Royal Institution. 

114 : 16. Athena. Sesame and Lilies, §§ 45 and 62; 
Gayley's Classic Myths, pp. 7, 16-18. 

115 : 10. Smoke . . . volcanic fires. Compare note, 
§ 79. 

115 : 24. Neuchitel. Port, town, canton, and lake in 
the valley of the Aar, Switzerland. — Jura. An extensive 
range of mountains in Switzerland and France. 

115 : 26. Saponaria. Saponaria officinalis, or soapwort, 
a plant containing saponin, which, like soap, is soluble, in 
all proportions, in water. 

115 : 34. "Aux Botanistes, 

Le club Jurassique." 

To the botanists. 
Of the club of Jura. 

116 : 3. Asmodeus. In latter Jewish demonology, a 
destructive devil. See Paradise Lost, iv, 168. Read the 
interesting story of how Asmodeus became a "lame devil." 



NOTES 325 



LECTURE I 

117 : 2. Greek Mythology. Myths, or fables, of the gods 
of the Greeks. 

117 : Note. Bellerophon. The hero who destroyed 
Chimaera. — Pegasus. The winged horse which was said 
to have sprung from the blood of Medusa, when Perseus 
cut off her head. 

118 : 6. '' There is no God." " The fool hath said in his 
heart, There is no God." Ps. liii, 1. 

118 : 15. Lerna. The lake, or swamp, near Argos. The 
water-serpent slain by Hercules was the Lernaean Hydra. 

118 : 19. Miasmata. The plural of miasma, which means 
infectious germs floating in the air. 

120 : 1 1 . St. George and the Dragon. The Faerie Queene, 
Canto XI, describes the dragon, tells of the three days' 
fight, and of the knight's victory on the third day, 

120 : 16. Hercules and the Hydra. See notes on the 
preceding section, and on § 70. 

120 : 21 . Original. Some of the texts have " origin " here. 

120 : 28. St. George, the Red Cross Knight of Spenser. 
See note, § 3, p. 142. Edmund Spenser (1552-1599), one 
of the greatest of English poets. Pan coast {Introduction 
to English Literature, New York, 1907, pp. 207, 208) says : 
" Spenser stands alone. He is the one supremely great un- 
dramatic poet of a play- writing time." 

120 : 33. Knight of the Garter. The highest order of 
knighthood in Great Britain, instituted by Edward III. 

121 : 1. George and Dragon of a public-house. The 
painted sign at, or over, the door, such as the King George- 
General Washington sign at the Union Hotel, kept by 
Jonathan Doolittle. See Rip Van Winkle. 



326 NOTES 

121 : 3. The mean person. The uneducated, or unin- 
formed. 

121 : 8. Hercules. The lines quoted are from ^neid, 
viii, 299, 300. 

123 :8. Don't. Would not "do not" look better, and 
sound better? 

123 : 28. Legend. The word means here, a wonderful 
story of the past. 

123:31. Burgeons out. Old English burjoun, a bud. 
Burgeons, or bourgeons , to sprout, to put forth buds. 

123 : 32. Leaf by leaf . . . milky stem and honied bell. 
What figure of speech? 

124 : IS. Fantasy. Fancy, an imaginative conception. 

125 : 11. Rejoiced as a strong man, etc. The reference is 
to Ps. xix, 5, 6. The preceding eight paragraphs are in 
the nature of an introduction. 

125 : 16. Pindar. A lyric poet of Thebes. He is said 
to have died at the age of eighty-six, 435 B.C. What is 
the story about the swarm of bees leaving some honey on 
his lips when he was young? — -ffischylus. A soldier and 
dramatic poet of Athens, son of Euphorion. He was in 
the battles of Marathon, Salamis, and Platiea. A tortoise 
fell on his head and killed him, 456 B.C. Where did the 
tortoise fall from? What is the story "Uncle Remus" 
tells about "Brer Tarrypin" on the water-shelf, in Mr. 
Terrapin Appears upon the Scene? 

125 : 27. Earth . . . water ... fire .. . air. In Milton's 
day, matter was thought to be subject to four primary 
forces — " Hot, Cold, Moist, and Dry," and objects fell into 
four classes, of which earth, air, water, and fire were types. 

125 : 28. Demeter (Ceres). See note, § 70. 

125 : 29. Poseidon (Neptune). God of the sea; son of 
Saturn and Cybele; brother to Jupiter and Pluto; husband 



NOTES 327 

of Amphitrite; father of Triton, Polyphemus, Phoreus, and 
Proteus. With a trident he ruled the waves. When he 
appeared on the ocean there was a dead calm. 

126 : 14. "Dust thou art, etc." Cxen. iii, 19. 

126 : 18. Proserpine . . . Queen of Fate. Daughter of 
Jupiter and Ceres. She became the wife of Pluto, and was 
known as "The Queen of Hell." The Greeks called her 
Persephone. Read Swinburne's Garden of Prosperine. 

126 : 24. The voice of thy brother's blood, etc. Gen. iv, 10. 

126 : 26. Lord of grain. " Side by side," seems to indicate 
that Ruskin refers to Pluto; but Cronus is the god of ripen- 
ing, harvest, and maturity. 

127 : 1. (i) Neptune ... (2) Nereus ... (3) Palaemon 
. . . (4) Leucothea ... (5) Thetis. (1) See note, § 10, 
(2) Nereus, son of Pontus and Gsea, husband of Diros, 
father of the fifty Nereides; (3) Palaemon, or Palemon, a 
god of the sea, son of Athamas and Ino — originally named 
Malicerta, he assumed the name of Palaemon when Neptune 
changed him into a sea-god, (4) Lucothea, the name of 
Ino after she became a sea-nymph; (5) Thetis, a sea-god- 
dess, daughter of Nereus and Doris, wife of Peleus, mother 
of Achilles. 

127 : 5. " Suffer a sea change." The Tempest, I, ii, line 
398. 

127 : 9. "Fountain Arethuse, etc." Milton's Lycidas, lines 
85, 86. 

127 : 13. Hair, as the sign of the strength of life. Com- 
pare Judges xvi, 17. See (1 Cor. xi, 14) what St. Paul has 
to say of a man who has long hair. 

127 : 18. Horse . . . sea-wave, animated and bridled. 

"The wild white horses foam and fret." 
— Matthew Arnold, The Forsaken Merman, line 21. 



328 NOTES 

127 : 20. Hephaestus. The Greek Vulcan, smith of the 
gods. 

127 : 30. Mars. The god of war; son of Jupiter and Juno; 
husband of Venus; father of Cupid, Anteros, and Harmonia. 
What connection is there between the month of March and 
Mars? 

128 : 1. Queen of the breath of man. See note, § 31. 

129 : 4. Gorgonian cold. See note, § 69. Perseus cut 
off the head of Medusa and gave it to Minerva. She placed 
it on her aegis (shield), and it turned into stone all who 
gazed upon it. 

129 : 8. Queen of maidenhood — stainless as the air of 
heaven. Compare Tennyson's Lancelot and Elaine, lines 1 

and 2 : — 

"Elaine the fair, Elaine the lovable, 

Elaine, the lily maid of Astolat." 
129 : 19. Odysseus. Latin, Ulysses, or Ulixes. See 
note, § 39. 

129 :26. Note, § 41. 

130 : 1. Didactic in their essence, as all good art is. 
Read Poe's essay, "The Poetic Principle," especially §§ 11- 
18, noting how, in so far as poetry is concerned, he dis- 
agrees with Ruskin. 

130 : 25. Chrysippus. A stoic philosopher of Tarsus, 
who wrote over three hundred treatises. There is a story 
that he died from laughing too much at the sight of an 
ass eating figs from a silver plate. 

130 : 26. Grantor. A philosopher of Soli; he was among 
the pupils of Plato, 510 B.C. 

131 : 13. Hesiod. A celebrated Greek poet, and supposed 
contemporary of Homer. 

131 : 32. See visions and dream dreams. Compare Joel 
ii, 28. 



NOTES 329 

132 : 2. Keats. John Keats (1795-1821), an English poet 
who has hardly been surpassed in "exquisite sensibility to 
the beauty of the things of sense." (Pancoast.) 

132 : 3. Morris. William Morris (1834-1896), English 
painter, architect, and poet. His life was devoted to stim- 
ulating a love of the beautiful in household decoration, 
book-making, literature, etc. " In his later years, he faced, 
as Ruskin did, the pressing social questions of his time, 
and strove manfully to set the crooked straight." (Pan- 
coast.) 

132 : 7. Reynolds. Sir Joshua Reynolds (1723-1793), 
one of the greatest portrait-painters of England. He was 
a contemporary and friend of Goldsmith, Burke, and John- 
son. — Gainsborough. Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788), 
a noted English painter. 

133 : 1. .ffiolus. Son of Hippotas, inventor of sails, 
ruler of storms and winds. What is an ^Eolian harp? 
Where is iEolia, or ^olis? 

133 : 2. "Sage Hippotades" of Milton. SeeLycidas, line 
96. John Milton (1608-1674), the greatest epic poet known 
to the world of English literature. 

133 : 6. But hear Homer, etc. The description which 
follows is taken from the beginning of the tenth book of 
the Odyssey. 

133 : 20. Danae. Daughter of Acrisius and Eurydice, 
mother of Perseus. 

133 : 30. w^olus gives them to Ulysses, all but one, bound 
in leathern bags. Professor Norton (R. to A'., Vol. Ill, 
pp. 20, 21) called Ruskin's attention to a mistake here: 
"But it was only 'the blustering wind' . . . (Od[yssey] 
X, 20) that ^olus had tied up." To this Ruskin replied: 
"That is indeed an important mistake about the bag. Of 
course these stories are all first fixed in my mind by my boy's 



330 NOTES 

[his own] reading of Pope — then I read in the Greek rapidly 
to hunt out the points I want to work on, and I am always 
liable to miss an immaterial point . . ." 

134 : 8. Lipari. The largest of the .^olian Islands, on 
the coast of Sicily. See Virgil's ^neid, viii, 417. 

134 : 9. Diodorus. Siculus Diodorus, author of histories 
of Egypt, Persia, Syria, Media, Greece, and Carthage. 

134 : 10. Sorrento. A town in the province of Naples, 
Italy. It is located on the Bay of Naples, sixteen miles 
from the city of Naples. 

134 : 13. Boreas. Boreas, or Aquilo, the north wind. 
Homer {Iliad, xx, 223), says Boreas, out of love for the muses 
of Ericthonius, turned himself into a horse. 

134 : 16. Oreithyia. Oreithyia (Orithyia), daughter of 
Erectheus, king of Athens, was loved by Boreas. He had 
to take her by force, because he could not play the lover's 
part by breathing gently or sighing. 

134 : 17. Ilissus. A river of Attica. 

134 :21. The Harpies. MWo, Ocypete, and Celeno, half- 
birds, half-maidens, with heads and breasts of women, bodies 
of birds, and claws of lions. They were demons of destruc- 
tion. 

134 : Note. Max Muller. 1823-1900. A German scholar 
of international reputation, professor of comparative phi- 
lology at Oxford. See reference to him in Sesame and 
Lilies, § 19. 

135 : 7. This is a month, etc. What month? 

135 : 14. And if you do not . '. . I'll give up, etc. The 
playfulness here attempted gives the paragraph a weak 
ending. 

135 : 29. Chary bdis. See note, § 39. On the Sicilian 
side Charybdis dwelt under an immense fig tree, swallowing 
down and sending forth the waters of the sea. 



NOTES 331 

136 : 9. Harpy Celaeno. Sec note, § 20. 

136:10. Seventh circle of the "Inferno." Dante's 
"Inferno" had seven circles. 

136 : 20. Arabesque. Arab-esque, an imaginary and 
fantastic ornamentation. Edgar Allan Poe seems to have 
liked this word. 

136 : 25. Sirens. Sea-nymphs, who, by their music, 
drew mariners to destruction. How did Ulysses and his 
companions get by, and what became of the Sirens? 

137 : 3. Tantalus. A king of Lydia, father of Niobe and 
Pelops. See next note. 

137 : 7. Forever kept hungry in sight of food. Was he 
not forever thirsty in a pool (in hell), the waters of which 
receded from him when he tried to drink? 

137 : 17. Pelops. Son of Tantalus. The gods restored 
him to life, and he became the husband of Hippodamia. 

137 : 20. Pandareos. In Greek legend it was he who stole 
the golden dog made by Hephaestus. 

137 : 27. Cerberus. Plato's three-headed dog, crouched 
at the gate of the infernal regions to keep the inhabitants 
in, and the living out. 

137:30. "Facilis descensus." An easy descent. 

138 : o. Sirius . . . the dog-star of ruin. According to 
ancient belief, epidemic diseases prevailed under the as- 
cendancy of Sirius. 

"Blazed bright and baleful like that autumn-star, 
The baleful sign of fevers." 
— Matthew Arnold, Sohrab and Rustum, lines 452, 453. 

138 : 9. Icarius. An Athenian who gave the peasants 

wine to drink. When intoxication bereft them of their 

reason, their friends and neighbors slew Icarius. He was 
changed into the star Bootes. 



332 NOTES 

138 : 10. Drunkenness of Noah. Gen. ix, 21. 

138 : 11. Actaeon. Son of Aristaeus. Because he in- 
truded himself at Diana's bath, she changed him into a 
deer. He was hunted and torn to pieces by his own dogs. 
— Hecuba. The wife of Priam, the mother of Paris. After 
the destruction of Troy, she fell to the lot of Ulysses and 
was afterwards changed into a hound. Her supposed tomb, 
in the Thracian Chersonesus, is called Cynossema (Dog's 
Tomb). 

138 : 13. Cynosarges. A surname of Hercules, also the 
name of a village in Attica where the cynic philosophers 
established their school. 

138 : 17. Deadly madness. Rabies, hydrophobia. 

138 : 24. Pandareos' dog. See note, § 23. 

139 : 5. Artemis. The Greek name of Diana, goddess 
of hunting and chastity; daughter of Jupiter and Latona; 
sister of Apollo. She has the names Phcebe, Luna, Dictynna, 
and Hecate. 

139 : 6. Hera. The Greek name of Juno, daughter of 
Saturn and Ops; wife of Jupiter; mother of Mars, Vulcan, 
Hebe, and Lucinia; queen of all the gods and goddesses; 
mistress of heaven and earth. 

139 : 7. Aphrodite. The Greek name of Venus, the god- 
dess of beauty and the mother of love. She sprang from the 
foam of the sea. 

139 : 12. The Furies. Tisiphone (Rage), Megaera (Slaugh- 
ter), and Alecto (Envy), daughters of Acheron rnd Nox, 
and punishers of evil-doers. 

139 : 16. London season. Evidently Ruskin means just 
the opposite. What figure of speech is this, and what 
purpose does it serve? 

139 : 21. Polygnotus. A celebrated painter of Thasos, 
who lived about 442 B.C. 



NOTES 333 

139 : 22. Delphi. A town on Mount Parnassus, where 
the temple of Apollo was located. What is meant by "The 
Oracle of Delphi"? 

139 : 23. Playing at dice. In Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 
who play dice, and for what purpose? — Penelope. Daugh- 
ter of Icarius, wife of Ulysses, mother of Telemachus. 

140 : 3. Hermes. The Greek name of Mercury, the 
messenger of the gods; the inventor of the lyre, which he 
gave to Apollo; the conductor of the dead into the infernal 
regions. 

140 : 4. Proteus. A god of the sea who had the power 
to convert himself into various shapes. He was also a 
prophet. 

140 : Note. Grotesque. Grotto-like, wildly or fantasti- 
cally formed. Poe liked this word. See arabesque, and 
note, § 22, p. 161. What special use did Poe make of the 
two words grotesque and arabesque f 

141 : 15. Mother of Lacedaemon [and Eurotas] . . , Taygeta, 
Daughter of Atlas and Pleionc. She was one of the Pleiades. 
(See next note.) Lacedaemon was king of Sparta. 

141 : 16. Pleiades. The seven daughters of Atlas and 
Pleione. After death they were placed in the heavens, 
becoming a constellation. — " Canst thou bind, etc." Job 
xxxviii, 31. 

141 : 20. Arcadia. A country in the middle of Pelopon- 
nesus, surrounded on all sides by land. It received its 
name from Areas, son of Jupiter. The inhabitants — 
shepherds, warriors, and musicians — thought themselves 
more ancient than the moon. Read the story of Evangeline. 
Is it appropriate that a town in Louisiana should have the 
name Arcadia? What is the Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney? 

141 : 23. Voice of waters. Wordsworth is not the only 
person that has heard the waters laugh and sing. Read 



334 NOTES 

the opening lines of Thanatopsis. See Ps. xlii, 7 : "Deep 
calleth unto deep." 

141 : Note. Hera. See note, § 24. 

142 : 8. Shepherd of the clouds. See § 28, " The shep- 
herd of the flocks of the sky," and the note on it. 

142 : 9. Argus. A god with a hundred eyes which took 
it turn-about watching and sleeping. Juno set him to 
watch lo; he was slain by Mercury, and changed, by Juno, 
into a peacock. 

142 : 13. After reading this paragraph, and the footnote, 
see the note on philologists, § 28. 

142 : 28. Pecuniarily, From pecus, cattle. What is the 
origin of peculiar ? 

143 : 4. Priam. King of Troy, father of Paris, whose 
carrying Helen to Troy, in the absence of Menelaus, 
of Sparta, caused the war between the Greeks and the 
Trojans. 

143 : 6. Diomed. A legendary Thracian king, son of 
Ares. 

143 : 12. Autolycus. Son of Hermes (Mercury) and 
Chione. The daughter of Autolycus, Anticlea, was the 
mother of Ulysses. 

143 : 13. Myrtilus. The charioteer of CEnomaus. 

143 : 16. The shepherd of the flocks of the sky. 

In Autumn 

" The shepherd winds are driving 
Along the ways on high 
A merry flock of eloudland sheep 
To meadows in the sky." 
— Robert Loveman, Poems, Philadelphia, 1897, p. 40. 

143 : 23. Jupiter. Son of Saturn and Cybele (Ops). 
Jupiter, with the aid of Hercules, defeated the giants of 



NOTES 335 

earth when they made war against heaven. (See note, § 77, 
p. 81.) He was worshipped by many of the heathen nations. 

143 : 26. Euripides. A tragic poet, pupil of Prodicus, 
Socrates, and Anaxagoras. — Hippomedon. Son of Nisi- 
machus and Mythidice. He was one of the seven chiefs who 
went against Thebes. He was killed by Ismarus. 

144 : 1. "Prime mobile." Italian for first movements, 
or first moveables. 

144 : 5. Foray. Another form of forage, meaning a raid, 
an irregular or sudden incursion for battle or for spoils. 

144 : 17. Athamas. A king of Thebes, son of ^olus. 
Read the story of his temporary insanity as a result of 
anger. 

144 : 18. Phrixus. Phryxus carried the Golden Fleece, 
a ram's hide, to Calchis, where he was entertained by King 
^etes. The Argonauts, Jason, and fifty other heroes, 
carried back the Golden Fleece. 

144 : 19. Helle. Daughter of Athamas and Nephele. 
That is a pretty story about the sea receiving from Helle 
the name Hellespont. 

144 : 21. Salmoneus. King of Elis. He tried to imitate 
Jupiter's thunders, and was immediately sent to the in- 
fernal regions. — Glaucus. A son of Sisyphus, king of 
Corinth. He was the owner of mares that were swift in 
the races. For a reason, Venus inspired the mares with such 
fury that they tore the body of Glaucus to pieces as he was 
returning from the games. 

144:24. Bellerophon . . . Chimaera. Bellerophon, son 
of Glaucus and Eurymede, was sent by lobates, king 
of Lycia, to conquer the monster Chimaera. With the 
assistance of Minerva, and by the aid of Pegasus — the 
winged horse — he was successful. See Milton's Paradise 
Lost, vii, 1 



336 NOTES 

144 : 31. Sisyphus. Son of iEolus and Enaretta. He 
meddled in the love affair of Jupiter and iEgina and for 
this was condemned to eternal punishment, which is, to 
roll a stone to the summit of a hill in the infernal regions. 
The stone always rolls back to the foot of the hill, 

145 : 7. Isthmian games. The public and solemn games 
of the Greeks were : the Olympian, the Pythian, the 
Nemean, and the Isthmian. These games, in which there 
were physical, mental, and musical contests, derived their 
names from persons or places. The Isthmian v/as named 
for the Corinthian Isthmus, which joins the Peloponnesus 
with the continent. 

145 : 8. K^pSwTTos dvSptdv. The greediest, shrewdest, or 
craftiest of men. Compare Iliad, vi, 153. 

145:19. Ixion. King of Thessaly, of uncertain parentage. 
At the table of the gods in heaven where Jupiter had carried 
him, he displeased his benefactor, was banished to hell and 
tied, by Mercury, to a whirling wheel, which, it was supposed, 
would never cease to turn. 

145 : 25. Aristophanes. Son of Philip of Rhodes, and 
a comic poet of Athens. He lived 434 b.c. 

145 : 29. 8ivos. Literally, a whirlwind. 

146 : 3. Semele, the mother of Bacchus. The daughter of 
Cadmus. After death she was deified, and became Thyone. 

146 : 8. Tavw^6€ipa. Taw, altogether, exceedingly; ideipa, 
the hair of the head. 

146 : 9. Danaides. The fifty daughters of Danaus, 
'cing of Argos. They married their fifty cousins, sons of 
Egyptus. Forty-nine of them, in obedience to their father's 
wish, slew their husbands the first night of their nuptials. 

146 : 10. Danae. See note, § 19. — Perseus. Son of 
Jupiter and Danae. Read the story of Perseus's successful 
combat with the Gorgon Medusa. 



NOTES 337 

146:11. Gorgons. See note, § 69. — Graiae. Graiae, 
or Graeae, the Gray-women : Dino, Pephredo, and Enyo. 

146:14. Medusa. One of the three Gorgons. See note, §69. 

146 : 27. Reread paragraph 14. 

148 : 3. Shakespeare. William Shakespeare (1564-1616), 
the greatest dramatist in the history of English literature. 

148 : 4. Mortimer. Edmund Mortimer, Earl of March. 
" [In] changing hardiment . . . Three times they breathed, 
etc." 1 Hsnry IV., I, iii, 101-103. 

148 : 8. Hotspur. Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, son 
of Henry Percy, Earl of Northumberland. The quotation 
is from 1 Henry IV., N, ii, 48, 49. 

148 : 11. Hamlet. Prince of Denmark. The Queen says 
of Hamlet: "He's fat and scant of breath." Hamlet, 
V, ii, 302. 

148:13. Orlando. One of the three sons of Sir Rowland 
de Boys. The quotation is from As You Like It, 1, ii, 233. 

148 : 20. Ares. Mars. 

148 : 22. Camilla. Queen of the Volsci, daughter of 
Metabus and Casmilla. She was so fleet, or swift, that she 
could run (or fly) over a field of corn without bending the 
blades, and over the sea without wetting her feet. 

149 : 4. Fresh air, etc. Is this "popular" touch out of 
place? 

149 : 6. Achilles. Son of Peleus and Thetis, the greatest 
of the Greek heroes in the Trojan War. 

149 : 10. Ambrosia. Ambrosia, from the Greek, means 
immortal, — food for the immortals. The fabled food of 
the gods, which was supposed to confer immortality on 
those who partook of it. 

149 : 12. Harpy falcon. Falcon, a bird trained to catch 
other birds, or game. Harpy, in Grecian mythology, a 
ravenous, filthy, woman-faced vulture, 



338 • NOTES 

149 : 19. As a falcon . . . straight at him. Compare 
Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, lines 398-402 : — • 

" Rustum . . . hurl'd 
His spear; down from the shoulder, down it came, 
As on some partridge in the corn a hawk, 
That long has tower'd in the airy clouds 
Drops like a plummet." 

149 : 29. Menelaus. King of Sparta, husband of Helen. 
Read the note on Priam, § 27. 

149 : 30. Hector. Son of Priam and Hecuba, chief of 
the Trojan forces when the Greeks besieged Troy. He slew 
many of the bravest Greek chiefs, but fled at the presence 
of Achilles, who pursued and killed him. 

151 : 23. Pope. Alexander Pope (1688-1744), a noted 
English writer in his day. Many of his smooth classical 
couplets are very quotable. He came near to being dis- 
honest in the attempt to further his inordinate literary 
ambition. 

152 : 10. Atreides. Atreides (Atrides), son of Atreus 
Agamemnon. The ending -ides means son ci'. 

152 : 19. Patroclus. The intimate friend and constant 
companion of Achilles in the Trojan War. He was slain 
by Hector, who, in turn, was killed by Achilles. 

152:23. Fresh turned. Would not ''freshly turned," 
or "fresh-turned" be better. 

152 : 29. Hephaestus. Vulcan. 

152 : 31. Erichthonius. The fourth king of Athens. 
He had the tails of serpents instead of legs. The invention 
of chariots is attributed to him. He reigned fifty years, 
and died 1437 b.c. 

152 : 33. Attica. A triangular division of Greece, bounded 
on two sides by the ^gean Sea, on the other by the moun- 



NOTES 339 

tains Cithaeron and Parnes. Athens was its principal 
city. 

153 : 2. Aglauros. When Erichthonius was a babe, 
Minerva placed him in a basket and gave strict orders that 
no one should open it. This was because of the child's 
terrible deformity. (See note above.) Aglauros had the 
curiosity to open the basket, and Minerva punished her by 
making her jealous of her sister Herse. 

153 : 3. Envy of Cain. See Gen. iv, 2-4. 

153 : 5. Herse. See note above on Aglauros. 

153 : 6. Mercury. Hermes. 

153 : 7. Pandrosos. Daughter of Cecrops, sister of 
Aglauros and Herse. (See notes above.) Because she had 
not the curiosity to open the basket containing Erichthonius, 
a temple was erected in her honor. 

153 : 10. Blessing of Esau. Gen. xxvii, 28. 

153 : 14. "Id sono Aglauro, chi divenne sasso." See 
Dante, Purgatorio, xiv, 142. 

153 : 32. Primrose. An early (Latin primus, first) 
flowering plant. 

154 : 1. Asphodel. The asphodel of the early English 
and French poets was the daffodil. The pale asphodel is 
said to be the only flower that blooms in hell. In Poe's 
Eleonora, the asphodels are "ruby-red." 

154 : 3. Crocus flame. The saffron bloom of the crocus. 

154 : 4. Ida. A mountain range in Asia Minor. 

154 : 5. Elysian fields. Elysium, a place in the infernal 
regions where the souls of the righteous were supposed to 
repose after death. 

154 : 8. Maia. Daughter of Atlas and Pleione. The 
most beautiful of the Pleiades. 

154 : 13. Vergil. Publius Maro Virgilius (70-19 b.c.) 
the greatest of the Latin poets. 



340 NOTES 

154 : 15. Chaucer. Geoffrey Chaucer {dr. 1340-1400), 
England's first great poet to break away from the native 
literary traditions of his people. 

154 : 17. Pastorals and Georgics. Works of Vergil. 

154 : 32. "There shall come forth a rod, etc." Is. xi, 1. 

155 : 1. Almiond rod of Aaron. See Ex. vii, 10. 

155 : 7. Course of Olympia. The place of the Olympic 
games, dedicated to Jupiter Olympius. See note on 
Isthmian games, § 29. 

155 : 9. Panathenaic. All the Athenian games. Similai 
to our modern "Field Day." 

155 : 14. Moriai. The Mora is a leguminous tree. 

155 : 15. Erectheum. Of, or pertaining to Arectheus, 
a mythic king of Athens. 

155 : 17. "Children like olive plants, etc." See Ps. 
cxxviii, 3. 

155 : 19. Rod ... of the stem of Jesse. Is. xi, 1: 
"And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem [or 
stump] of Jesse." 

155 : 21. Antioch. A city in Asia Minor, founded by 
Seleucus, and named by him in honor of his father, Antiochus. 

155 : 22. Extreme unction. The sacrament of anoint- 
ing in the last hours. 

155 : 29. Agonia. Italian for horror, or agony. Latin 
Agonia is another name for Agonalia, a Roman festival, — 
from agon, a struggle, contest, or combat. What is the 
origin of agonize ? 

155 : 31. Palestine. Called also Canaan, and The Holy 
Land. The name in Greek (JlaKaLcrTlvri) means the country 
of the Philistines. It is the land of the Hebrews; Jeru- 
salem is the chief city. 

156 : 1. British Museum. The building, in London, in 
which England's greatest art collection is kept. It contains, 



NOTES 341 

also, a vast library of between two and three millions of 
books. The circular reading room is one hundred and forty 
feet in diameter, and over a hundred feet high. — Dolphin. 
A fish from five to eight feet long; a constellation between 
Aquila and Pegasus. Read the story of Arion and the 
dolphin. 

156 : 13. Cretan colonists. People of Crete. 

156 : 14. Pytho. The ancient name of Delphi. 

156 : 17. Hydria. An urn. 

156 : 19. Tarentum . . . Taras. Tarentum, also called 
Taras, an Italian city on the western coast of Calabria, 
Taras, a son of Neptune, supposed to have built Taren- 
tum. 

156 : 24. Magna Graecia. A part of Italy, where the 
Greeks planted colonies. — Arion. A noted lyric poet on the 
island of Lesbos. It was he whose harp so charmed the 
dolphins. See the note on dolphin, § 39. 

156 : 26. .ZEneas. Son of Anchises and Venus; husband 
of Creusa; father of Ascanius. After the destruction of 
Troy he built a fleet of twenty ships and escaped to the 
coasts of Africa. How did he save his father when Troy 
was in flames? 

156 : 29. Merlin prophecy, etc. About 1200 a.d. Helie 
de Barron wrote the French prose romance of Merlin, which 
contained, in the appendix, Merlin's Prophecies. See 
1 Henry IV, III, i, 149. 

157 : 8. Laocoon. In the Trojan War, Laocoon, a priest of 
Apollo, opposed the admission of the wooden horse into the 
city. For this, two great serpents crushed him and his sons. 
See Byron's Childe Harold, Canto IV, stanza clx. 

157 : 12. Scylla. Between Italy and Sicily are two rocks 
called Scylla and Charybdis. On the Italian side, in a cave, 
dwelt Scylla, a twelve-footed, six-headed monster. 



342 NOTES 

157 : 16. Peplus. An upper garment worn by Grecian 
and Roman women. 

157 : 23. Turner. See note, § 56. 

157 : 24. Ulysses and Polyphemus. Ulysses, a king of 
Ithaca, whose adventures in the Trojan War furnished 
Homer the subject for his Odyssey: the Greek name of 
Ulysses is Odysseus. See note, §16. Polyphemus a Cyclops, 
son of Neptune (Poseidon) and Thoosa. Ulysses and some 
of his companions put out the one eye of Polyphemus with 
a fire-brand. 

158:1. Cloud-phantasm. A cloud-fancy. 

158 : 14. The race is not to the swift. Eccl. ix, 1 1 : " The 
race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong." 

158 : 24. Parable of the ten virgins. See Matt, xxv, 1. 
Sidney Lanier says there were ten virgins, and five of them 
were foolish; there were ten lilies, and all of them were 
wise. 

158 : 26. Pentecost. See Acts ii, 2. 

158 : 31. The zeal of thine house, etc. Ps. cxix, 139. 

159 : 1. Ares. Mars. 

159 : 17. Melody. An agreeable succession of sounds. 
How does melody differ from harmony? 

159 : 21. Measured and designed . . . impulsive and 
passionate. What is said here of music may also be applied 
to poetry. An example of a measured and designed poem 
is Poe's The Bells, the four stanzas of which may be 
tabulated as to the kinds of bells, the metals, what they tell, 
how they tell it, etc. An example of an impulsive and pas- 
sionate poem is Poe's Annabel Lee, or Pinkney's A Health. 

159 : 22. Athena . . . aids the shout of Achilles. Read 
Browning's A Tale (Epilogue to The Two Poets of Croisic) 
for the story of the cricket that " Lighted on the crippled 
lyre," and aided the player in winning the prize. 



NOTES 343 

159 : 24. Demeter. See note on Ceres, § 70. 

160 : 1. ApoUine lyre . . . Doric flute. The lyre was 
the most famous of ancient stringed instruments. At first 
there were three strings, afterwards eight, and, finally, 
through a long process of development, we have the piano. 
The flute, or pipe, was the wind instrument. They were 
made of reeds, and of the bones of stags, fawns, asses, and 
elephants. Flute-music was thought to exert a strong in- 
fluence on the minds and bodies of men — to the extent of 
curing certain diseases. 

160 : 2, Pipe of Pan. Pan, a man with horns, long ears, 
and the lower half of his body like a goat. The Pan-pipes 
(Syrinx) were reeds fashioned by himself. What is the ori- 
gin of the word panic ? 

160 : 3. Double pipe of Marsyas. Marsyas, the supposed 
inventor of the flute, challenged Apollo to a musical contest. 
Apollo defeated him and then beat him to death. 

160 : 6. Gorgonian serpents. Instead of hair, the heads 
of the Gorgons were covered with vipers. 

161 : 11. Music ... in her health, the teacher of perfect 
order. Read Browning's Saul. 

161:15. Gloria in Excelsis. Glory in the highest. — 
The Marseillaise. La Marseillaise, a French patriotic song, 
composed at Strasburg, on the night of April 24, 1792, by 
Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle, a captain of engineers. 
When, where, and by whom was "The Star Spangled Ban- 
ner" written? 

161 : 31. [1869.] The year is not given in the original. 

163 : 14. Spirit . . . quench . . . grieve. This refers 
quench to 1 Thes. v, 19; grieve to Eph. iv, 30. 

163 : 30. Pisistratus. An Athenian who ordered a com- 
mission of scholars, about 537 B.C., to collect and revise 
the Iliad and the Odyssey. 



344 NOTES 

164 : 1. A beautiful woman, armed like Athena. This 
woman was Phya. 

164 : 5. Antiparos. An island in the ^gean Sea, op- 
posite Par OS. 

164 : 19. St. Louis. Brother of Charles I., king of 
Naples. 

164 : 20. The Cid {dr. 1040-1099), called also El Cam- 
peador. The Cid, master, Campeador, champion, or chal- 
lenger. He is the principal national hero of Spain, and is 
famed for his exploits with the Moors. — Chevalier Bayard. 
A French national hero (1475-1524), caUed "the knight 
without fear, and without reproach." 

165 : 2. Horace. Quintus Horatius Flaccus (65-8 b.c), 
a poet whose talents were recognized by Virgil. The special 
qualities of his Satires and Epistles are humor and wit. 

165 : 3. Wordsworth. William Wordsworth (1770-1850), 
one of England's greatest poets. His works are inspired 
by love of Nature and of man. His poetry is simple and 
true, in comparison with the shams and artificialities of 
Pope. 

165 : 6. Mechanical drill in verse-writing. Writing verse 
by pattern, or by the foot, without proper reference to poetic 
thought. 

165 : 10. Hexameter. A line of verse having six metrical 
feet. 

165 : 19. Thyme. A sweet-smelling flower. — Matin. 
Morning. 

165 : 21. Faun. A god, of fields and shepherds, some- 
thing like the Satyr. 

165 : 22. Rome. The capital of Italy, and the centre of 
the Roman Catholic Church. 

166 : 13. Sell that thou hast, etc. See Matt, xix, 21; 
Mark x, 21; Luke xii, 33; xviii, 22. 



NOTES 345 



II. ATHENA KERAMITIS 
{Athena in the Earth) 
167:13. The Greek word for "breathing." Ilvio} or 

168 : 21. St. Paul. An early apostle c? the Christian 
Church. See Acts xiii, 9. 

169 : 4. Nemean lion. The first of the "Twelve Labors 
of Hercules" was the combat with the lion that infested the 
valley of Nemea. 

169 : 6. Python. A serpent which sprang from stagnant 
waters and mud, after the deluge of Deucalion. 

170 : 28. "Born of the spkit." See John iii, 6. 

171 : 5. The strong word "ascertained." Make a list 
of the synonyms of ascertained, arranging them in the 
order of their strength. 

171 : Note. Manuel d' Iconographie Chretienne. Hand- 
book of Christian Iconography. — Iconography, the art of 
representation by pictures or images. Christian Iconog- 
raphy, the study of the representations in art of the Deity, 
the persons of the Trinity, angels, saints, etc. — Lorsque 
vous aurez fait le proplasme, etc. When you will have made 
protoplasm, and outlined a face, you will have made flesh 
with glycasm for which we have given the receipt. In old 
men you will indicate the wrinkles and, in young people, 
the corners of the eyes. Thus it is, according to Panselinos, 
that flesh is made. 

172 : 19. In which all things live, move, and have their 
being. Acts xvii, 28. 

173 : 4. Ethics of the Dust. Published, 1866. 

174 : Note. Mr. Darwin. Charles Darwin (1809-1882), 
an illustrious English biologist, grandson of Erasmus Dar- 



346 NOTES 

win, the poet. See Professor Winchell's article, "Darwin- 
ism," in the Encyclopcedia Americana. The Cambridge 
(England) Daily News, Thursday, June 24, 1909, contains 
an account of the Darwin Centenary Banquet, at which Mr. 
William Erasmus Darwin spoke of his father "as a man 
and as he knew him from a child." 

175 : 9. Calcareous slime. Slime consisting of, or con- 
taining, calcium carbonate or carbonate of lime. 

177 : 30. Fire to speak. See Ex. iii, 2; xiii, 21; xix, 18; 
Lev. ix, 24; x, 2; Num. xi, 1, 3; xvi, 35; Deut. iv, 12, 15, 
33, 36; V, 24, 26; 1 Kings xviii, 24; 1 Chr. xxi, 26; Is. 
Ixvi, 16, etc. — Dove, to bless. See Matt, iii, 16; Mark i, 
10; Luke iii, 22; John i, 32. 

178 : 12. Hieroglyph. A character in picture writing. 
The word here means a character or figure with a hidden 
meaning. 

179 : 1. Than ever "vanti Libia con sua rena." Than 
ever boasted Libya with her sand. 

180 : Note. Richard Owen. Sir Richard Owen (1804- 
1892), an English anatomist and paleontologist. — Hippo- 
campus. A sea-horse. 

180 : 16. Gigantomachia. This is the Latin form. Eng- 
lish, Gigantomachy, a war of giants, especially the mythic 
war of the giants against heaven. See the notes on Ossa 
and Pelion, § 77. In some of the texts this word is hyphen- 
ated : Giganto-machia. 

180 : 18. "That which thou sowest, etc." 1 Cor. xv, 36. 

180 : 24. ^sculapius. Son of Apollo, husband of Epi- 
one, father of Machaon and Padalirus, who were skilled in 
medicine. One of the four daughters, Hygeia, is the godr 
dess of health. 

181 : 7. Nascent eyes. Eyes just beginning to see and 
discriminate. 



NOTES 347 

181 ; 33. Frenzied grotesque. This should be "frenzied 
grotesqueness," or "the frenzied grotesque." Ruskin, 
however, uses grotesque elsewhere as here. 

182 : 1. Psalter of St. Louis. See note, § 46. 

182 : 16. Lacertine. Also lacertain, like a lizard. 

183 : 5. Dove with the olive branch. See Gen. vii, 11. 
183 : 15. Peacock of Hera. Hera (Juno) rode in a 

chariot drawn by peacocks. 

183 : 16. Dove of Aphrodite. Aphrodite (Venus) was 
specially fond of the dove, the sparrow, the swan, and the 
dolphin. 

183 : 20. Cherubim. The Hebrew plural of cherub. 

183 : 31. Mr. Fergusson. James Fergusson (1808-1886), 
a Scottish writer on architecture. His Fire and Serpent 
Worship was published 1868. 
P 183 : 32. Draconian. From Draco, a dragon; also the 
"name of a famous lawgiver of Athens, 621 B.C. 

183 : 33. Judea. In Bethlehem of Judea Jesus was born. 
See Matt, ii, 1. 

184 : 31. "Leguminous" plants. Such as beans, peas, 
clover, etc. Legumen is an albuminous substance char- 
acteristic of grain-bearing plants. 

184:33. "Laetum siliqua quassante legumen." Pod 
shaking its joyful (or joy-giving) legumen. 

185 : 9. Acacia, laburnum, Judas-tree . . . vetch. Con- 
sult dictionary or botany. Why is the Judas-tree so called? 

185 : 11. Trefoil tracery. Three-leaf tracery. 

186 : 4. Henbane . . . mandrake . . . tobacco . . . 
cyclamen . . . primulas . . . stamens . . . lobes . . . corolla, 
are all botanical terms. Consult botany or dictionary. 

186 : 6. Umbelled and cruciferous plants. Latin umbella, 
a shade. Such plants as milkweed and carrot. Crucifer- 
ous, having four petals arranged like the arms of a cross. 
Such plants as mustard and turnip. 



348 NOTES 

186 : 13. Hemlock drink. Socrates, by the perjury of 
witnesses, was tried for corrupting the Athenian youth, 
making innovations in the religion of the Greeks, and ridi- 
culing their gods. He was condemned to drink hemlock. 
See Keats's Ode to a Nightingale, lines 1 and 2. 

186 : 14. Chervil. A plant with pinnately divided, 
aromatic leaves. 

187 : 1. Catkined trees. Such as the willow, poplar, and 
chestnut. The flowers are along the sides of a slender axis. 
Called catkined, because of the resemblance to a cat's tail. 

187 : 5. Coveting of Eve. See Gen. iii, 6. 

187 : 9. 

" Rosa sempiterna, 

Che si dilata, rigrada, e ridole 
Odor di lode al Sol." 

The rose eternal, 
Which spreads herself, divides, and scents 
Odor of praise to the Sun. 

188 : 1. Spinous process. Having the form of a spine or 
thorn. 

188 : 2. Awn or beard. What is the origin of the word 
awning ? 

189 : 2. Lilies, asphodels, amaryllids, irids, rushes. See 
footnote to the next paragraph. 

189 : 15. Crocus . . . hyacinth . . . star of Bethlehem . . . 
gladiolus . . . water lilies (Nereid sisters). Consult diction- 
ary or botany. Why is the " Star of Bethlehem" so called? 

189 : 19. Ganges, Nile, Arno, and Avon. Ganges, a large 
river of India, emptying into the Indian Ocean. Nile, the 
longest river in Africa, and one of the longest in the world. 
Arno, a river in Tuscany, Italy. Avon, an English river on 
which Shakespeare's Stratford is located. 



NOTES 349 

189 : 22, The Annunciation. The festival (March 25) in 
memory of Gabriel's announcement of the incarnation to 
the Virgin Mary. 

189 : 23. Fleur-de-lys. French for flower of the lily. 

189 : 24. Christ's lily of the field. See Matt vi, 28; 
Luke xii, 27. 

190 : 1. Perdita's "The crown imperial, lilies of all kinds." 
The Winter's Tale, IV, iii, 126. 

190:7. "Giglio." Italian for Zt7i/. 

190 : 22. Loved better than the gray nettles, etc. Ruskin 
seems here to be contrasting country ("lowly") life with 
suburban or city life. Which does he prefer? 

191 : 4. Hyacinth and convallaria. Consult dictionarj'- or 
botany. Explain "hyacinth hair," in Poe's poem To Helen. 

191 : 25. Narcissus. A handsome youth who became 
enamored of his own image in a fountain. Because he 
could not reach the object of his affection, he killed himself, 
and his blood was changed into the flower which bears his 
name. 

192 : 18. Quatrefoil, cinquefoil, sixfoil. Four-, five-, and 
six-leaved. 

193 : 6. Foxglove, snapdragon, and calceolaria. Consult 
dictionary or botany. 

193 : 12. With paleness round. For poetry this would 
do; for prose "with paleness around" is better. 

193 : 17. Kalmia . . . stamens . . . borage. Botanical 
terms. 

194 : 8. ^sculapian. Medicinal plants, named for ^scu- 
lapius, the god of medicine. 

194 : 10. "Erba della Madonna." The flower of the Virgin 
Mary. Literally, the grass of the Virgin Mary. 
194 : 15. "Labiatae." From the Latin labium, lip. 
194 : 16. Strength for healing. Compare Rev. xxii, 2. 



350 NOTES 

194 : 28. Ordinary botanist. Does Ruskin's answer, in 
§ 89, to the questions proposed in this paragraph (§ 88), 
indicate that he regards himself as an extraordinary botanist? 

196:4. '"Glaukopis." Literally blue-eyed. Ruskin says 
"gray-eyed," § 93, p. 232. 

196 : 17. Aristotle. A famous philosopher and pupil of 
Plato who called him the philosopher of truth. He died 
322 B.C. 

196 : 26. "Purpureos inter soles, et Candida lunae sidera." 
Among the purple suns, and the white sides of the moon. 

196 : 27. " Pro purpureo poenam solvens scelerata capillo." 
The wicked woman paying the penalty for golden hair. 

196 : 33. Mur ex-dye. Dye made from the shell of the 
murex. 

197 : 15. Davy's safety-lamp. Sir Humphry Davy 
(1778-1829), a celebrated English chemist. He invented 
the safety -lamp in 1815. A safety-lamp does not ignite 
the gas in a coal mine. 

197:16. Subterranean "damp." Called also "fire- 
damp," Consists chiefly of light carbureted hydrogen. 

197 : 27. "Chiaroscuro." The arrangement of light and 
dark parts in a work of art. 

198 : 4. "If thine eye be single, etc." See Matt, vi, 22; 
Luke xi, 34. 

198 : 16. Attic coins. Coins of Attica. 

198 : 25. Lapislazuli. A rich blue alurninous mineral. — 
Smalt. A deep blue pigment. 

198 : Note. Payne Knight. Richard Payne Knight 
(1750-1824), an English numismatist and archaeologist. 
See Gayley's Classic Myths, Boston, 1900, p. 16, note. 

200 : 3. Troy. The capital of Troas in Asia Minor. 
Here the siege was conducted by the Greeks under Agamem- 
non. — Ajax. A brave Greek in the Trojan War. 



NOTES 351 

200 : 8. Erebus, Son of Chaos, a god of Hades. 

200 : 15. Pandarus. Son of Lycaon. He aided the Tro- 
jans in the war with the Greeks. 

200:16. Helen. The beautiful, unfortunate wife of 
Menelaus. Her flight to Troy with Paris, 1198 B.C., brought 
about the Trojan War. See note on Priam, § 27, and note 
on Menelaus, § 34, 

201 : 21. When the ecstasy which gave it birth has passed 
away forever. This reminds one of Wordsworth's Ode: 
Intimations of Immortality, lines 17 and 18: — 

" But yet I know, where'er I go. 

That there hath passed away a glory from the earth." 

201 : 24. Phidias. An Athenian sculptor who died 
432 B.C. His statue of Minerva was in the Pantheon. 

203 : 2. Libyan. The Libyan Desert in Africa. Libia, 
the daughter of Epaphus, king of Egypt. 

203 : 19. Plectrum. A small instrument used in playing 
upon the lyre. 

204 : 5. Altar to a God unknown. See Acts xvii, 23. 
204 : 9. A God who made of one blood, etc. See Acts 

xvii, 26. 

204 : 20. Seats bought . . . price of a dove. See Matt. 
xxi, 12; Mark xi, 15; John ii, 14, 16. 

III. ATHENA ERGANE 

(Athena in the Heart) 

206 : 9. Valley of the Somme. The Somme, a river in 
northern France, which flows into the English Channel. 

206 : 19. The faults of a work of art, etc. In connection 
with this paragraph, read Sesam*' and Lilies, § 10. 



352 NOTES 

206 : 22. A foolish person builds foolishly, etc. Compare 

Matt, vii, 24-27. 

207 : 19. Stonehenge. A prehistoric monument in Salis- 
bury Plain, Wiltshire, England. 

207 : 22. Michael Angelo, A famous Italian sculptor and 
painter (1475-1564). 

207 : 26. Bill Sykes. The burglar in Dickens's Oliver 
Twist. Ruskin mentions Bill and his mistress, Nancy, in 
Sesame and Lilies, § 22. 

207 : Note. Rouen Cathedral. Rouen is the capital of 
Seine-Inferieure, France. Its cathedral is one of the most 
impressive in existence. 

208 : 8. That which is born of evil begets evil. Probably 
suggested by John iii, 6 : "That which is born of the 
flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the spirit is 
spirit." 

209 : 2. Pharaoh, or David, etc. Pharaoh, a title given to 
Egyptian kings. David, the second king of Israel. Leoni- 
das, a Greek hero, king of Sparta, slain at Thermopylae, 
480 B.C. Valerius, Publius Valerius, supposed to have been 
the colleague of Brutus in the first year of the Roman 
Republic. (Marcus Valerius was a distinguished Roman 
general). Barbarossa (Italian "Redbeard"), a Mohamme- 
dan corsair, who conquered and became ruler of Algiers 
about 1517. He was succeeded by his brother Khair-ed- 
Din. Cceur de Lion (French, Cceur de Leon, Lion-hearted), 
a name given, on account of their valor, to Richard I. of Eng- 
land, and Louis VIII. of France. Dandolo, Andrea Dandolo 
(1310-1354), Doge of Venice, 1343-1354. The reference may 
be to Enrico Dandolo (1108-1205), Doge of Venice, 1192-1205, 
as both were first successful soldiers, then chiefs or head 
of government. Frederick the Great, Frederick II. (1712- 
1786), king of Prussia. It will be observed that Ruskin 



NOTES 353 

gives nine names and eight nationalities. Which Coeur 
de Leon does he refer to ? 

209 : 20. In connection with this paragraph, read 
Sesame and Lilies, paragraph 10. 

210 : 19. The fathers have eaten sour grapes, etc. See 
Jer. xxxi, 29; Ezek. xviii, 2. How may we know that the 
allusion is to Ezekiel? 

** What time I hear the storming sea. 
Blood of my ancestor stirs in me; 

Thrustararorum was his name. 

The brave old fisher from whom I came I 

With brawny arm he hauled the net, 
And I see in my hands the mark of it yet.'* 
— Henry Nehemiah Dodge, Mystery of the West, Boston, 1906, 
"Foreword," lines 1, 2, 13, 14, 41, 42. 

211 : 3. Giotto. Giotto di Bondone (1276-1337), an 
Italian painter, architect, and sculptor. — Diirer. Albrecht 
Diirer (1471-1528),- a German painter and engraver. 

211 : 19. Geneva . . . Mont Blanc. Geneva, the capital of 
the canton of Geneva. Switzerland. Mont Blanc (French), 
White Mountain, the highest mountain of the Alps. Its 
summit is crossed by the French-Italian boundary. 

211 : 31. Voirons. A mountain range in Haute-Savoie, 
France, ten miles east of Geneva, Switzerland. 

212 : 21. Wonder and sorrow concerning life and death, 
etc. Possibly this "inheritance" is as much from Bishop 
Ulfilas, the teacher and apostle of the Goths about the 
middle of the fourth century, as from the "first sea kings." 
What is the inheritance of the Celtic soul? 

2 a 



354 NOTES 

212 : 29. The pure heart it will make pure. Compai 
Titus i, 15 : " Unto the pure all things are pure." See als<'' 
the title-page of Abram Lent Smith's Lava Fires, New York 
1888: — 

** Here's a truth that will endure, 
*To the pure all things are pure.' " 

214 : 14. " Stones of Venice." Published, Vol. I, 1851 
Vols. II, III, 1853. 

216 : 1. Useful black servants to the Americans. Wh^ 

black? Do the Americans now buy their coal from Eng- 
land? Even brick used to be brought to America from 
England. Old Christ Church, Alexandria, Virginia, and 
"Old Pohick," near Mount Vernon, the churches Washing- 
ton attended, were built of brick that came from England. 

216 : 13. The ignoble. Surely Ruskin does not mean to 
refer to Americans as "ignoble." For the sake of Charles 
Eliot Norton alone he would have spared America this 
thrust — even had it been in his mind. — Fire balls. Bullets 
and cannon-balls. 

216 : 24. In justice only she judges and makes war. 
Compare Is. xxiii, 5. 

216 : 30. I will mock you, etc. Prov. i, 26, 27. King 
James's version : " and your destruction cometh as a whirl- 
wind." 

216 : 33. Dies Irae. The day of wrath (ire); the Judg- 
ment Day. 

217 : 7. Cries of peace, where there is no peace. See Jer. 
vi, 14; viii, 11. 

217 : 33. Clothed, and in your right minds. See Mark v, 
15; Luke v, 35. 

219 : 18. But when men are good and true . . . stronger 
kings. Read, in connection with this. Sesame and Lilies, § 44. 



NOTES 355 

222 : 12. Truism. The truth is so obvious as to make 
a statement unnecessary. 

223 : 11. Job . . . ash heap. J oh ii, 8. 

226 : 23. Provence. An ancient government of south- 
eastern France. 

227 : 22. Petroleum cannot possibly be in a hurry to 
arrive anywhere. Is this humor? 

227 : 33. A wholesome human employment is the first 
and best method of education, mental as well as bodily. 
Judged by the ever multiplying agricultural, mechanical, 
and technical schools in America, and elsewhere, the world 
has adopted Ruskin's view. 

228 : 16. Riband-makers. Ribbon-makers. 

228 : 24. Navvies, Laborers on canals or other public 
works. 

232 : 3. Unguents. Ointments. 

232 : 8. Returning to cool English. Notice Ruskin's 
remark, paragraph 132, concerning "a violent little frag- 
ment of an undelivered lecture." 

234 : 5. Three different ways of writing. Note Ruskin's 
three ways of writing, remembering that these notes (1 
to 7) belong to his third way or manner. 

234 : 18. Albert Diirer. See note on Albrecht Diirer. 
Albrecht is the German for Albert. 

234 : 23. Aglaia's cestus. In Greek mythology, Aglaia 
is one of the three graces. Cestus, a girdle, particularly 
that of Aphrodite (Venus), which gave the wearer the power 
of exciting love. In § 42, " Athena in the Heavens," Rus- 
kin speaks of his essay, "The Cestus of Aglaia." 

234 : 25. This same opinion, etc. Compare Browning's 
Andrea del Sarto, line 69. 

235 : 10. Cinderella. In a fairy tale, she is a beautiful 
girl who drudges for her sisters and stepmother. 



356 NOTES 

235 : 13. Marchande des Modes. Milliner,' merchant of 
fashions. 

235 : 27. Null' altra pianta, etc. H. F. Gary's transla- 
tion gives this in Purgatory, I, 102-104: — 

" No other plant, 
Cover'd with leaves, or harden'd in its stalk. 
There lives. ..." 

236 : 33. Aladdin's palace. See the story in Arabian 
Nights' Entertainments, and learn the meaning of the say- 
ings, "To fmish Aladdin's window," and "To exchange 
old lamps for new ones." 

237 : 6. Siddim. A valley mentioned in Gen. xiv, 3, 8, 10. 

237 : 11. They had brick for stone, etc. Exact quotation 
of the latter part of Gen. xi, 3. 

237:21. Insolent . . . solemnity, /n = not; salens =• 
accustomed; insolent = not accustomed. Sollus = all, en- 
tire; annus = a year; solemnity = that which takes place 
annually. See note on philologists, § 28, p. 32. 

238 : 2. Upside-down, Babel. The swallow's nest. 

238 : 5. "Lor via e lor fortuna." Their way and their 
fortune. 

238 : 19. Thomas Bewick. An English wood-engraver 
(1753-1828). — George Cruikshank. An English artist 
and caricaturist (1792-1878). 

238 : 25. Wolds of Tyne. Woods on the river Tyne, 
in the north of England. 

239 : 33. Delphian, Vestal . . . cosmic. Delphian, of 
or pertaining to Delphi. (See note, § 24, p. 164.) Vestal 
of or pertaining to Vesta, the virgin goddess of the hearth. 
Cosmic, having reference to universal law or order. 

240:4. "Home, Sweet Home." It is said that John 
Howard Payne, when writing this song, had in mind the 



NOTES 357 

home of Miss Mary Harden, Athens, Georgia, which he 
visited in October, 1835. Afterwards, by letter, he made 
her this proposal of marriage: — 

"I am conscious of my own un worthiness of the boon which 
I desire from you, and cannot, dare not, ask you to give a decisive 
answer in my favor now, only permit me to hope that at some 
future time I may have the happiness of believing my affections 
returned, but at the same time I conjure you to remember in 
making your decision that it is in your power to render me happy 
or miserable." 

— Extract from the Annals of Athens, Georgia. 

240 : 7. Sebastian Bach. Johann Sebastian Bach (1685- 
1750), one of the greatest composers of Church music. 
He was born in Eisenach, and died in Leipsic. 

240 : 18. La Robbia. Luca della Robbia, whose real 
name was Luca di Simone di Marco della Robbia (1400- 
1482), a celebrated Italian sculptor. His son Andrea, 
and his grandsons, Giovanni and Girolamo, were noted for 
their work in terra-cotta. 

241 : 26. Crackling of thorns under the pot. See Eccl. 
vii, 6. 

242 : 26. " With puissant words, and murmurs made to 
bless," Milton, Arcades, line 60, 

"This undisturbed song of pure consent, 
Aye sung before the sapphire-colored throne 
To him that sits thereon." 

— Milton, Ode : At a Solemn Music, lines 6-8. 

243:21, XP^^'^'H •"■^povt]. XP^<^^V' golden; irephv-q, buckle. 

245 : 10. Northern hands and eyes are, of course, never so 
subtle as Southern. Tt is interesting to make a study of 
the degrees of latitude that have furnished the best poets, 



358 NOTES 

orators, artists, statesmen, warriors, etc. Climate and 
contour affect not only the body — hand, eye, voice; but also 
physical and mental energy. See what is said of Luini, 
§ 157, and of Turner, § 158. 

247 : 33. Cretin. A degenerate, deformed idiot. 

248 : 29. And then you are a man. Mark Antony says 
of Brutus {Julius Ccvsar, V, v, 73-75): — 

"His life was gentle, and the elements 
So mix'cl in him that Nature might stand up 
And say to all the world, 'This was a man!' " 

Read Burns's poem: For a' That and a' That: — 

The rank is but the guinea stamp 

A man's a man for a' that. 

249 : 14. Habits of swine . . . taste of husks, etc. The 
allusion is to the story of the Prodigal Son, Luke xv, 11-23, 
particularly to verse 16. 

250 : 21. Athanasian creed. One of the three great creeds 
of the Christian Church, dating from the sixth century. 
The name is from Saint Athanasius, a father of the Church, 
who was the chief defender of the orthodox faith against 
Arianism. 

250 : 25. Mr. Mill. John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), an 
English philosophical writer, logician, and economist. 

251 : 10. Athol . . . Glen Tilt. Athol, a district in 
northern Perthshire, Scotland. Glen Tilt, a valley in north- 
ern Perthshire, Scotland. The road follows the river Tilt 
through the glen. 

251 : 15. Loch Katrine. A lake in southwestern Perth- 
shire, 25 miles north of Glasgow. This lake furnishes the 
water-supply of Glasgow. "Ellen's Isle," Scott's Lady of 
the Lake, is located in this lake. 



NOTES 359 

251 : 19. Dean and Chapter. Dean, an ecclesiastical digni- 
tary, subordinate to a bishop, and the chief officer of a chapter, 
which is an assembly of monks, prebends, or other clergymen. 

251 : 27. Castaly. The English form of Castalia, an 
ancient fountain on the slope of Mount Parnassus, Greece, 
sacred to the Muses and Apollo. 

251 : 32. If the blind lead the blind, etc. Matt, xv, 14; 
Luke vi, 39. 

253 : 7. Luini. Bernardino Luini (or Luvini), an Italian 
painter of the Lombard school. He was born about 1475, 
and died about 1535. 

253 : 13. Angelico. Fra Giovanni da Fiesole (1387-^ 
1455), an Italian painter of religious subjects. 

253 : 14. Veronese. Paul (Paolo Cagliari) Veronese 
(1528-1588), an Italian painter of the Venetian school. 

254 : 1. Lugano. Town and lake in the canton of Ticino, 
Switzerland. — Saronno. A town in the province of Milan, 
Italy. The Sanctuary of the Virgin, a church of the six- 
teenth century, has a series of frescoes by Luini. 

254 : 9. Milanese school. The school of Milan. 

254 : 30. His instincts in early infancy were warped into 
toleration of evil, or even into delight in it. This reminds 
one of Pope's lines (Essay on Man, lines 217-220): — 

" Vice is a mon.ster of so frightful mien, 
As, to be hated, needs but to be seen: 
Yet seen too oft, familiar with her face, 
We first endure, then pity, then embrace.'^ 

256 : 4. Haydon. Benjamin Robert Haydon (1786- 
1846), an English historical painter. His life was full of 
struggle and disappointment, and ended with suicide. 

256 : 6. Blake. William Blake (1757-1827), an English 
poet, engraver, and painter. 

256 : Note. French Emperor (1869). Louis Napoleon. 



360 NOTES 

The Hercules op Camarina 

257 : 19. Camarina. An ancient city on the southern 
coast of Italy, 45 miles southwest of Syracuse. 

258 : 18. Donatello, Velasquez. Donatella, Donato di 
Niccolo di Betto Bardi (1386-1466), a Florentine sculptor, 
and one of the leaders in restoringsculpture in Italy. Velas- 
quez, Diego Rodriguez de Silva Velasquez, or Velaequez 
{cir. 1599-1660), a celebrated Spanish painter. 

259 : 3. Correggio. Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1494- 
1534), an Italian painter of the Lombard school. 

259 : 5. Liker. More like a foot. 

260 : 8. Argos. A city in Argolis, Greece. It produced 
many noted sculptors. 

260 : 9. Corinth. A city of Greece, situated near the 
Isthmus and Gulf of Corinth. 

260 : 10. Thurium. Or Thurii, an ancient city of Magna 
Grsecia, situated near the modern city of Terranova. — The 
Siren Ligeia. Siren, from the Greek, means to pipe or 
whistle. The Siren Ligeia, on the coin, as in other works of 
art, is represented as having the head, arms, and bust of a 
young woman, and the wings and lower part of the body of a 
bird. What American writer is the author of a "grotesque 
arabesque" story with the title ''Ligeia"? 

260 : 11. Fountain of Arethusa. The name of a spring in 
ancient Greece, on the island of Ortygia, in the harbor of 
Syracuse. Other ancient Grecian springs bore the same 
name. See Milton's Lycidas, line 85. — Terina and Syracuse. 
Terina, a town of the Brutii, a people of Italy. Syracuse, 
the capital of the province of Syracuse, on the island of 
Ortygia, Sicily. 

260 : 15. JEnus. Or ^nos, now Eno, a city of Thrace, 
at the eastern mouth of the Hebrus. 



NOTES 361 

260 : 16. Bacchus of Thasos. See note on Bacchus, § 70, 
p. 74. Thasos, or Thasus, a small island in the .^gean Sea 
on the coast of Thrace. 

260 : 17. Pomatum'd. Dressed with pomade, a per- 
fumed ointment originally made of apples. 

260 : 19. Apollo of [Clazomenae. Clazomence, an ancient 
Ionian city of Asia Minor, near the modern Vurla. 

260 : 24. Venus of Melos. Melos, Italian Milo, an island 
in the monarchy of Cyclades, Greece. It is noted for the 
Venus of Melos {Venus di Milo) found in the ruins of the 
city of Melos. 

261 : 22. Wild writhing . . . longing for the moon . 
agony of eyes . . . fiddle-strings. Pretty plain taik, but 
probably delivered in a half-humorous way. 

262 : 30. Pons asinorum. Bridge of asses. 

264 : 1. Fells Leo. Latin feles, felis, a cat; leo, a 
lion. 

264 : 3. Typhon and Echidna. Typhon, a monster giant 
with an hundred heads. He made war against the gods, and 
was put to flight by Jupiter's thunderbolts. See Milton's 
Christ's Nativity, line 226. Echidna, the mother of 
dragons, Gorgons, the Nemean Lion, and all other adver- 
saries. 

264 : 5. Cerberus ... the Hydra of Lerna. See note on 
Cerberus, § 23, p. 162. Lerna, a country of Argolis, cele- 
brated for a grove and lake where the Danaides are said to 
have thrown the heads of their husbands. 

266 : 22. Zeuxis. A celebrated painter, born at Her- 
aclea. He flourished about 468 b.c. He was the disciple 
of Apollodorus, and contemporary with Parrhasius. 

267:19. Holbein. Hans Holbein — "The Younger" 
(1497-1543), a German historical and portrait painter and 
wood engraver, son of Hans Holbein, "The Elder." 



362 NOTES 

267 : 33. Crown of Parsley first and then of the Laurel. 

In the Olympic games, the victor's prize was a wreath of 
wild olive; in the Pythian, the prizes for musical excellence 
were gold and silver, for gymnastic exercises a crown of 
iam'el; in the Nemean, at first a wreath of olive, after- 
wards of parsley; in the Isthmian, at first a crown of pine, 
afterwards of parsley, and still later the crown of pine was 
resumed. What is the origin of the term Poet Laureate ? 



INDEX TO NOTES 



Aaron, 340. 
Abijah, 291. 
Achilles, 337. 
Acropolis, 304, 305. 
Actseon, 332. 
Addison, 296. 
iEgis, 303. 
^neas, 341. 
^neid, 326. 
.Enus, 360. 
Mollis, 329. 
^schylus, 326. 
-^sculapian, 349. 
^sculapius, 346. 
Africa, 302. 
Aglaia's Cestus, 355. 
Aglauros, 339. 
Agonia, 340. 
Ajax, 350. 
Alcmena, 303. 
Alecto, 275. 
Alembics. 320. 
Alexandria, Virginia, 354. 
Alps, 314. 
Ambrosia, 337. 
Amphitheatre, 316. 
Angelico, 359. 
Antioch, 340. 
Antiparos, 344. 
Antwerp, 299. 
Apennines, 314. 
Aphrodite, 332, 347. 
ApoUine Ivre, 343. 
Apollo, 303, 305. 
Apollo-worship, 303, 



Arabian Nights' Entertainments, 
356. 

Aratra Pentelici, 303. 

Arcadia, 333. 

Ai'cadia (Louisiana), 333. 

Arcadia of Sir Philip Sidney, 333. 

Ares, 337, 342. 

Argos, 360. 

Argus, 334. 

Aristocrac}', 320. 

Aristodemus, 318. 

Aristophanes, 336. 

Aristotle, 350. 

Armstrong, Sir William, 298. 

Arno, 348. 

Arnold's The Forsaken Mer- 
man, 327. 

Arnold's Sohrab and Rustum, 
298, 331, 338. 

A Roman Lawyer in Jerusalem, 
282. 

Artemis, 332. 

Asmodeus, 324. 

Asphodel, 339. 

As You Like It, 337. 

Athamas, 335. 

Athanasian creed, 358. 

Athena, 303, 324. 

Athena Agoraia, 305. 

Athene, 304. 

Athens, Georgia, 357. 

Athens (Greece), 275, 310. 

Atlayitis, the Antc-Deluvibn 
World, Ignatius Donnelly, 
310. 



363 



364 



INDEX TO NOTES 



Atreides, 338. 
Attica, 338. 
Austria, 298, 319. 
Autolycus, 334. 
Avon, 348. 

Babylon, 305. 
Bacchus, 303, 305, 361. 
Bach, Sebastian, 357. 
Backsliding, 292. 
Baden-Baden, 280. 
Barbarians, 318. 
Barbarossa, 352. 
Bartholomew Fair, Ben Jonson, 

299. 
Baruch, 287. 
Barzillai, 291. 
Bates, Herbert, 301. 
Battersea, 316. 
Bayard, Chevalier, 344. 
Beadles, 320. 
Beethoven, 295. 
Belgium, 299. 
Bellerophon, 325, 335. 
Bethels, 320. - 
Bewick, Thomas, 356. 
Birmingham (England), 280. 
Blackmail, 271. 
Blake, William, 359. 
Bond Street (London), 279. 
Bone-picker, 281. 
Boreas, 330. 
Bosphorus, 302. 
Bradford, 300. 
British Museum, 303, 340. 
Britomart, 320. 
Broad Church, 304. 
Brough, 300. 
Browning, A Tale, 342. 
Browning's Andrea del Sarto, 

355. 



Brussels, 299. 
Buckingham Palace, 300. 
Burns, Robert, 358. 
Byron's Childe Harold, 341. 

Cain, 339. 

CaUiope, 303. 

Camarina, 360. 

Cambridge (England), Daily 
News, 346. 

Camilla, 337. 

Campagna, 269. 

Carlisle, 300. 

Carlyle, Thomas, 316. 

Cary, H. F., 356. 

Castaly, 359. 

Cathedral, Baltimore, 307. 

Cerberus, 331, 361. 

Ceres, 303, 308. 

Cervantes, 284. 

Chalcedony, 269. 

Character of the Happy Warrior, 
Wordsworth, 313. 

Charybdis, 330. 

Chaucer, 280, 282, 340. 

Chimsera, 335. 

Chrysippus, 328. 

Cid,' The, 344. 

Cinderella, 355. 

Civil War, 278. 

Clazomenas, 361. 

Clio, 303. 

Cloister, 302. 

Cceur de Lion, 352. 

Colenso, Bishop, John William, 
283. 

Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, 
333. 

Congressional Library, Wash- 
ington, 307. 

Conventicle, 292. 



INDEX TO NOTES . 



365 



Corinth, 360. 
Corinth, Battle of, 318. 
Correggio, 360. 
Grantor, 328. 
Crete, 318. 
Cricketing, 317. 
Cruden, 293. 

Cruikshank, George, 356. 
Crusade, 302. 
Cynosarges, 332. 

Danae, 329, 336. 

Danaides, 336. 

Dandolo, 352. 

Dante, 287, 295. 

Dante's Inferno, 331. 

Dante's Purgatorio, 339. 

Darwin, Charles, 345. 

Darwin, Erasmus, 345. 

Darwin, William Erasmus, 346. 

Da\'id, 290, 291,352. 

David Harum, 310. 

Da\'y, Sir Humphry, 350. 

Delphi, 333. 

Demeter, 326, 343. 

Dickens, 309. 

Dickens's Oliver Twist, 352. 

Die Dorier, Miiller, 317. 

Diodorus, 330. 

Diomed, 334. 

Dionysus, 303. 

Dives, 280. 

Divina Commedia, 287. 

"Dixie," 318. 

Draconian, 347. 

Dodge, Henry N., 353. 

Dodge 's Mystery of the West, 353. 

Donatello, 360. 

Donne, John, 276. 

Don Quixote, 284. 

Doric flute, 343. 



Dowden, Edward, 292. 
Diirer, 353, 355. 

Echidna, 361. 
Egypt, 302. 
Elysian fields, 339. 
Ephesus, 305. 
Erato, 303. 
Erebus, 351. 
Erectheum, 340. 
Erichthonius, 338. 
Esau, 339. 

Ethics of the Dust, 343. 
Euripides, 335. 
Eurotas, 333. 
Euryale, 303. 
Euterpe, 303. 
Exeter Hall, 320. 

Faerie Queene, 274, 320, 325. 
Faun, 344. 

Fergusson, James, 347. 
Fetish, 274. 
France, 297. 

Franklin, Benjamin, 300. 
Frederick the Great, 352. 
Furies, The, 275, 332. 

Gainsborough, Thomas, 329. 

GaUleo, 287. 

Ganges, 348. 

Garden of Proserpine, Swin- 
burne, 327. 

Gareth and Lynette, Tennyson, 
322. 

Gavley's Classic Myths, 324, 
350. 

Geneva, 353. 

Genserie, 315. 

George III., 300. 

Gettysburg, 318. 



366 



INDEX TO NOTES 



Gigantomachia, 346. 
Giotto, 353. 
Glaucus, 335. 
Gorgons, 303, 337. 
Gothic, 298. 
Graia^, 337. 
Greece, 298. 
Guillotines, 304. 

Harden, Miss Mary, 357. 

Hades, 311. 

Hamlet, 308, 311, 337. 

Harpies, The, 330. 

Harpy falcon, 337. 

Hawes, 300. 

Hawthorne's The Great Stone 

Face, 307. 
Haydon, Benjamin R., 359. 
Hector, 338. 
Hecuba, 332, 
Helen, 351. 
Helle, 335. 

Helps, Sir Arthur, 317. 
Hemlock drink, 348. 
1 Henry IV., 337. 
Hephfpstus, 328, 338. 
Hera, 332, 334, 347. 
Hercules, 277, 303, 325, 326. 
Hermes, 333. 
Hesiod, 328. 
Hezekiah, 274. 
Hieroglyph, 346. 
Hieroglyphic, 302. ' 

High Church, 304. 
Hiller's Anthologia Lyrica, 291. 
Hippomedon, 335. 
Holbein, 295, 361. 
"Home, Sweet Home," 356. 
Homer, 286, 329. 
Homer's Uiad, 330. 
Hooke, Robert, 287. 



Horace, 344. 
Horace, Ode, 321. 
Hotspur, 337. 
Hurdle-races, 317. 
Hydria, 341. 

Icarius, 331. 
Iconograjohy, 345. 
Ida, 339. 
Idothea, 272. 
Iliad, 286, 287. 
Ilissus, 330. 
India, 302, 319. 

Introduction to English Litera- 
ture, Pancoast, 325. 
Isadas, 318. 
Isthmian games, 336. 
Italy, 298. 
Ixion, 336. 

Jansen, Zacharias, 287. 

Jason, 308. 

Jesse, 291, 340. 

Johnson's Rasselas, 284. 

Jones, Inigo, 299. 

Jousting, 316. 

Judas Iscariot, 282. 

Judea, 347. 

J^dius Coesar, 285, 287, 289, 

358. 
Jupiter, 303, 305, 334. 
Jura, 324. 

Keats, John, 329. 

Keats 's Ode to a Nightingale, 

348. 
Kerioth, 282. 
Kingsley, Charles, 304. 
Knight, Richard Payne, 350. 
Knight-errant, 306. 
Knight of the Garter, 325. 



INDEX TO NOTES 



367 



Lacedsemon, 333. 

Lancelot and Elaine, Teiin}'- 

son, 328. 
Lanier, Sidney, 319, 342. 
Laocoon, 341. 
Latona, 305. 
Lazarus, 280, 281. 
Leonardo da Vinci, 295. 
Leonidas, 352. 
Leppenshey, Hans, 287. 
Lerna, 325, 361. 
Leucothea, 327. 
Li pari, 330. 
Lombardy, 314. 
London Times, 297. 
Longfellow, 287. 
Lord Byron's The Curse of 

Minerva, 303. 
Louis, Dr. Antoine, 304. 
Louis Napoleon, 359. 
Lovoman, Robert, 334. 
Low Church, 304. 
Lugano, .359. 
Luini, 359. 
Lycidas, 311, 327, 329, 360. 

Macbeth, 21&. 

Madonna, The, 308. 

Magna Gra^cia, 341. 

Maia, 339. 

Mars, 328. 

Marseillaise, The, 343. 

Mars' hill, 275. 

Marsyas, 343. 

Masques, Ren Jonson's, 299. 

Medusa, 303, 337. 

Megara, 275. 

Melpomene, 303. 

Menelaus, 338. 

Merchant of Venice, 298, 307. 

Mercury, 305, 339. 



Merlin, 341. 

Miclielangelo, 287, 295, 352. 

Microscope, 287. 

Mill, J. Stuart, 272, 273, 358. 

Milton, 282, 326, 329. 

Milton's Arcades, 357. 

Milton's Ode: At a Solemn 

Music., 357. 
Milton's Ode: To the Nativity, 

301, 361. 
Minerva, 303, 307. 
Modern Painters, 272, 295, 317. 
Mont Blanc, 353. 
Moriai, 340. 
Morris, William, 329. 
Mortimer, 337. 
Mount Parnassus, 305. 
Miiller, Karl Ot fried, 317. 
Muller, Max, 330. 
Muses, The, 303. 
Myers's Ancient History, 291 
Mynell, Mrs., 272, 273. 
Myrtilus, 334. 

Napoleon, 315. 
Narcissus, 349. 
Nemean lion, 345. 
Neptune, 327. 
Nereus, 327. 
Neuchdtel, 324. 
Newton, Charles, 324. 
Newton, Sir Isaac, 287. 
Nile, 302, 348. 
Noah, 332. 

Norton, Charles Eliot, 287, 293, 
308, 323, 329, 354. 

Ode to a Grecian Urn, Keats, 324 
Odysseus, 328. 
Odyssey, 286, 287, 329. 
Olympia, 277, 340. 



368 



INDEX TO NOTES 



Olympus, 307, 308. 

On the Massacre of Glencoe, 

Scott, 296. 
Oreithyia, 330. 
Orlando, 337. 
Ossa, 308. 

Ossa and Pelion, 346. 
Owen, Sir Richard, 346. 

Palsemon, 327. 
Palestine, 340. 
Palladio, 299. 
Pallas, 304, 308. 
Pan, 343. 
Panathenaic, 340. 
Pandareos, 331. 
Pandarus, 351. 
Pandrosos, 339. 
Paradise Lost, 282, 324, 335. 
Paris, 305. 
Parthenon, 303, 304. 
Patroclus, 338. 
Paul, 275. 

Payne, John Howard, 356. 
Pegasus, 325. 
Pelion, 308. 
Pelops, 331. 
Penelope, 333. 

Pentateuch and Book of Joshua 
Critically Examined, The, 283. 
Peplus, 342. 
Percy's Reliques, 307. 
Perdita, 349. 
Perseus, 336. 
Peter Bell, 292. 
Peter the Fisherman, 287. 
Peter the Pope, 287. 
Pharaoh, 352. 
Phidias, 351. 
Philologists, 280. 
Phrixus, 335. 



Phya, 344. 
Pindar, 277, 326. 
Pinkney's A Health, 342. 
Pisan Maremma, 269. 
Pisistratvis, 343. 
Plain of Dura, 311. 
Plato, 310. 
Pleiades, 333. 
Plutus, 308. 
Poe, Edgar Allan, 331. 
Poe's Annabel Lee, 342. 
Poe's Lenore, 289. 
Poe's The Bells, 342. 
Poe's To Helen, 349. 
Poet Laureate, 362. 
Polygnotus, 332. 
Polyhymnia, 303. 
Polyphemus, 342. 
Poor Law Act, 281. 
Pope, Alexander, 338. 
Pope's Essay on Man, 359. 
Poseidon, 326. 
Prceterita, 274, 281. 
Priam, 334. 

Prologue, The, 280, 282. 
Proserpine, 303, 327. 
Proteus, 333. 
Provence, 355. 
Purgatory, 356. 
Pytho, 341. 
Python, 345. 

Raphael, 295. 
Remus, 314. 

Renaissance architecture, 301. 
Republic of Plato, 291. 
Reynolds, Sir Joshua, 329. 
Ricardo, David, 272, 273. 
Riley, James Whitcomb, 285. 
Rip Van Wiiikle, 325. 
Robbia, Luca della, 357. 



INDEX TO NOTES 



369 



Rob Roy's Grave, Wordsworth, 

309. 
Romaunt of the Rose, The, 280. 
Rome, 305, 344. 
Romulus, 314. 
Rose Terrace, 281. 
Rouen Cathedral, 352. 
Royal Exchange, 299. 

St. Andrew, 307. 

St. George, 325. 

St. George's Cross, 307. 

St. Louis, 344. 

St. Michael, 299. 

St. Paul, 327, 345. 

St. Paul's, 299. 

St. Peter's, 299. 

St. Stephen, 287. 

Salyards, Joseph, 272. 

Salmoneus, 335. 

Samuel, 314. 

Sancho Panza, 283. 

Saronno, 359. 

Sartor Resartus, 316. 

Saturn, 303. 

Scott, Sir AValter, 296. 

Scott's Lady of the Lake, 358. 

Scott's The Lay of the Last 

Minstrel, 296. 
Scylla, 341 . 

Selling of absolution, 304. 
Semele, 305, 336. 
Sesame and Lilies, 311, 313, 320, 

324, 330, 351, 352, 353, 354. 
Seven Lamps of Architecture, 

The, 301. 
Severn, Joseph, 324. 
Shakespeare, 337. 
Shylock, 319. 
Sirens, 331. 
Sirius, 331. 

2b 



■Sisyphus, 336. 

Smith, Abram Lent, 354. 

Smith, Adam, 273. 

Somme, 351. 

Sorrento, 330. 

Southey, Robert, 286. 

Sparta, 318. 

Spenser, Edmund, 274, 325. 

"Star Spangled Banner, The," 

343. 
Steeple chase, 317. 
Stevenson, Robert Louis, 278. 
Stheno, 303. 
Stonehenge, 352. 
Stones of Venice, 301, 354. 
Story, W. W., 282. 
Suwarrow, 315. 
Sykes, Bill, 352. 
Synagogues, 301. 
Sj'racuse, 360. 
Syria, 302. 

Tale of Two Cities, Dickens, 

304. 
Talisman, 274. 
Tantalus, 331. 
Taras, 341. 
Tarentum, 341. 
Taygeta, 333. 
Telescope, 287, 
Temple Bar, 299. 
Teniers, David, the Elder, 294. 
Teniers, David, the Younger, 

294. 
Tennesson's The Brook, 310. 
Terpsichore, 303. 
Tetzel, Johann, 304. 
Thalia, 303. 
Thanatopsis, 334. • 
Thessaly, 307. 
The Tempest, 327. 



370 



INDEX TO NOTES 



Thetis, 327. 
Thurium, 360. 
Tiber, 305. 
Tintoret, 314. 
Tisiphone, 275. 
Titian, 295. 
Torcella, 269. 
Tournament, 316. 
Trov, 350. 

Turner, J. M. VV., 295. 
Turnpike, 272. 
Tuscany, 298. 
Tyndall, John, 324. 
Typhon, 361. 

Ulfilas, 353. 
Ulysses, 329, 342. 
"Uncle Remus, "326. 
University of Oxford, 303. 
U7ito this Last, 271, 272, 273, 

313. 
Urania, 303. 
United States, 297. 

Valerius, 352. 

Vatican, 305. 

Velasquez, 360. 

Venice, 298. 

Venus di Milo, 361 . 

Venus-worship, 303. 

Veronese, 359. 

Versailles, 305. 

Vergil, 339. 

Vergil's ^nerd, 330. 

Virgin-worship, 303. 

Voirons, 353. 

Von Liebig, Baron Justus, 320. 

Vulgate, The, 280, 307. 

Wandel, 269. 

Wealth of Nations, 273. 



Westminster Abbey, 317. 
Westmoreland, 300. 
Whinstone, 308. 
Winter's Tale, The, 349. 
Wordsworth, 292, 308, 333, 344. 
Wordsworth 's Ode : Intima- 
tions of Immortality, 351. 
Wren, Sir Christopher, 2P9. 

"Yankee Doodle, "318. 

Zeuxis, 361. 

New Testament 

Acts, 269, 273 (2), 275, 287, 293, 
342, 345, 351. 

1 Corinthians, 274, 301, 303,- 
327, 346. 

2 Corinthians, 275, 311. - 
Eph., 293, 343. 

Gal., 275. 

Heh., 275, 276, 285, 304. 

James, 283, 292. 

John, 270, 274, 279, 282 (3), 
290, 305, 345, 346, 351, 352. 

Luke, 271, 273 (2), 274, 280 (3), 
281, 282 (2), 285 (2), 287, 
290 (2), 293 (2), 300 (2), 304, 
306, 307, 311, 344, 346, 349, 

350, 358, 359. 

Mark, 273, 282 (2), 290 (2), 
300, 304, 305, 306, 307, 310, 
311, 344, 346, 351, 354. 

Mattheiu, 271, 273, 274 (2), 279, 
280 (2), 282 (3), 285 (2), 287, 
288 (4), 290 (2), 292 (2), 
293 (2), 294, 300 (3), 301, 304, 
305, 306 (2), 307, 310, 322 (2)r 
342, 344, 346, 347, 349, 350, 

351, 352, 359. 
1 Peter, 316. 



INDEX TO NOTES 



371 



Phil., 274, 285, 292. 

Rev., 279, 282, 284, 292, 293 (3), 

322, 349. 
Romans, 275, 288, 290, 292 (2), 

293. 
1 Thes., 343. 

1 Tim., 277. 

2 Tim., 322. 
Titus, 354. 

Old Testament 

1 Chron., 285, 291, 299, 346. 

Deut., 293, 346. 

Eccl., 275, 289, 318, 342, 357. 

Exodus, 290, 299, 311, 340, 346. 

Ezek., 353. 

Genesis, 284, 285, 291, 299, 311, 

327, 332, 339 (2), 347, 348, 

356 (2). 
Hos., 293. 
Isaiah, 269, 274, 275, 276, 285, 

292 (2), 293, 322 (2), 340 (2), 

346, 354. 



Jeremiah, 285 (2), 287, 293, 307, 

353, 354. 
Job, 269, 276 (2), 293, 300, 308, 

319, 333, 355. 
Joel, 293, 328. 
Jo.sh., 282. 
Judges, 327. 

1 Kings, 291 (3), 309, 346. 

2 Kings, 274. 
Lamentations, 276. 
Leviticus, 299, 346. 
Mai., 292. 
Micah, 322. 
Neh., 299. 
Num., 299, 346. 

Proverbs, 290 (2), 294, 311, 322, 

354. 
Psalms, 275, 276, 285 (3). 292 

(3), 293 (3), 300, 325, 326, 

334, 340, 342. 

1 Sam., 314, 322. 

2 Sam., 285, 290,291. 
Zech., 288, 293. 



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Byron, Lord. Poems. 

Campbell, Thomas. Poems. 

Children's Garland. 

Children's Treasury of Lyrical 

Poems. 
Epictetus, Golden Sayings of. 
Golden Treasury Psalter. 
House of Atreus. By ^schylus. 
Jest Book. By Mark Lemon. 
Keats, John. Poems. 
Landor, W. S. Poems. 
London Lyrics. 
Lyric Love. 
Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, 

Thoughts of. 
Miscellanies. By E. Fitzgerald. 



Moore, Thomas. Poems. 
Pilgrim's Progress. By John Bun- 

yan. 
Religio Medici. By Sir T. Browne. 
Robinson Crusoe. By D. Defoe. 
Rossetti, C. Poems. 
Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. 
Shakespeare, W. Songs and Son- 
nets. 
Shelley, P. B. Poems. 
Southey, R. Poems. 
Tales from Shakespeare. By C, 

Lamb. 
Tennyson, Lord Alfred. 

Idylls of the King. 

In Memoriam. 

Lyrical Poems. 

The Princess. 
Theologica Germanica. 
Tom Brown's School Days. By 

T. Hughes. 
Trial and Death of Socrates. 
Wordsworth. Poems. 



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A Kentucky Cardinal. 
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Peace and Happiness. 

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A Cathedral Pilgrimage. 

The Flower of England's Face. 

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The Choice of Books. 

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Happiness. 

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Parables of Life. 

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Biblical Idylls. 

Biblical Masterpieces. 

The Psalms and Lamentations. 

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The Makers of Florence (Vol. I). 
The Makers of Florence (Vol. II). 

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The Religion of an Educated Man. 

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Maxims and Reflections of Goethe. 

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